Hawaii--How Safe is Your Hospital?

Hawai'i Free Press

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Hawaii--How Safe is Your Hospital?
By News Release @ 10:13 PM :: 5217 Views :: Hawaii Statistics, Health Care

About The Score – Hospital Safety Score

From Leap Frog Group Hospital Safety Score May, 2013

The Hospital Safety Score is an A, B, C, D, or F letter grade reflecting how safe hospitals are for patients. For the first time ever, this score empowers you to make informed decisions about the safety of your hospital care.

1 in 4 Medicare patients will walk out of a hospital with an issue they didn’t walk in with, many of which are fatal.

Some people do more research on what car to buy than what hospital to go to for medical care. The Hospital Safety Score provides data and research to help you make informed decisions about a critical aspect of your hospital stay – safety. A hospital may have the best surgeons and greatest technology in the world, but unless it is preventing infections, and eliminating medical and medication errors and injuries, it is not delivering on a very basic premise: ensuring the safety of you and your loved ones. The goal of the Hospital Safety Score is to reduce the more than 180,000 yearly deaths from hospital errors and injuries by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm. “Harm” ranges from infections and acquired injuries (such as bedsores) to medication mix-ups and other errors, some potentially fatal. See your local hospital’s data page for information on the 26 measures that comprise its score.

How were the measures included in the Hospital Safety Score selected?

Leapfrog worked under the guidance of the nine-member Leapfrog Blue Ribbon Expert Panel to select measures and develop a scoring methodology. The Panel is made up of patient safety experts from across the country: