2019 Patient Safety Excellence Award & Outstanding Patient Experience Award recipients announced

Healthgrades, an online resource that provides information on physicians and hospitals, has announced the recipients of its annual Healthgrades 2019 Patient Safety Excellence and Outstanding Patient Experience Awards.

Released in conjunction with the American Hospital Association’s National Hospital Week (May 12-18), the awards recognize U.S. hospitals that prioritize patient safety and deliver an outstanding patient experience.

This year Healthgrades said 460 U.S. hospitals earned the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award, placing them among the top 10 percent of all short-term acute care hospitals reporting patient safety data.

Additionally, 434 hospitals received the Healthgrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award, representing the top 15 percent of hospitals in the nation for patient experience. As part of the analysis, Healthgrades evaluated 3,449 hospitals that submitted at least 100 patient experience surveys to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), covering admissions from January 2017 through December 2017 to identify hospital performance in this area.

Between 2015 and 2017, Healthgrades said its 2019 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient hospitals demonstrated excellent performance in safety provided for patients in the Medicare population, as measured by objective outcomes (risk-adjusted patient safety indicator rates) for 14 patient safety indicators defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Healthgrades also reviews the ‘Retained Foreign Object’ indicator; this adverse outcome is considered a never event and hospitals that report even one of these events are ineligible for the award.

On average, the organization pointed out that 127,667 patient safety events could have been avoided if all hospitals performed similarly to award recipients on each of the 14 patient safety indicators evaluated by Healthgrades.

Patients treated in hospitals receiving the Patient Safety Excellence Award were, as compared to patients at non-recipients’ hospitals, on average:

·   55.9 percent less likely to experience an accidental cut, puncture, perforation or hemorrhage during medical care.

·   50.9 percent less likely to experience a collapsed lung due to a procedure or surgery in or around the chest.

·   64.4 percent less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital.

·   57 percent less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired at the hospital.