by Doug Campbell
Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital (VUAH) was recently awarded a fall 2018 patient safety grade of “A” from the Leapfrog Group, placing the hospital among the safest in the nation.
The Leapfrog Group, which also publishes a separate Top Hospitals list each year, is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage that works to encourage health care safety, quality and affordability.
Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Score uses 27 measures of publicly available hospital data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from infections, injuries and medical errors.
These measures come from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement.
To determine a safety grade Leapfrog not only looks at outcome measures but also process measures such as staff responsiveness and structural measures such as the overall hospital environment and how thoroughly technology is embedded into the delivery of care.
“During 2018 Leapfrog enhanced its already rigorous measures around patient safety so this is an impressive result. This is the 11th time out of 14 surveys that we have received an A score. I want to express my appreciation to every member of our team because they play an important role in the safety and well-being of our patients,” said C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Health System Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
In the recent survey, more than 2,600 hospitals across the nation were assigned grades of A, B, C, D or F for safety, and only 30 percent received an “A.” The safety score for each hospital can be found at http://hospitalsafetyscore.org/.
Together, Leapfrog members provide health benefits to more than 37 million Americans in all 50 states.
