File photo.
Long Beach Memorial Medical Center received high scores in hospital safety by the national nonprofit The Leapfrog Group, it was recently announced.
The group’s biannual Hospital Safety Score looks at the overall performance of hospitals in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors, according to its website.
Long Beach Memorial has received an A grade since the nonprofit began the HSS three years ago.
Community Hospital of Long Beach, another MemorialCare Health System hospital, also received an A grade from the HSS, nonprofit officials stated.
“I congratulate MemorialCare Health System’s Long Beach hospitals for safety excellence, and look forward to the day when all hospitals will match this standard,” Leapfrog Group CEO Leah Binder said.
“This is a testament to the more than 6,000 employees and affiliated physicians that serve the community at our three Long Beach hospitals and numerous outpatient facilities,” said Tamra Kaplan, chief operating officer at Long Beach Memorial.
St. Mary Medical Center of Long Beach also received an A grade, its sixth consecutive letter grade from The Leapfrog Group.
“The Long Beach community and anyone who receives care at St. Mary Medical Center should understand that we work very hard at making this the safest and highest quality hospital it can be,” said Joel Yuhas, president of Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center.
The center’s ongoing safety program include a Rapid Response team, a multidisciplinary ICU team, an active Patient Safety Committee, a Pharmacy/Therapeutics Committee and an Infection Control Committee.
A total of 2,523 hospitals nationwide were scored for their performance between fall 2014 and spring 2015 according to a release. Only 182 hospitals received perfect scores.
The release also stated the scoring uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single A, B, C, D or F score, representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm.
“At a time when more than 1,000 people die daily from preventable accidents in hospitals, Leapfrog believes patient safety should be Job One,” said Binder. “To reinforce that goal of consistent vigilance, we’ve made it easier for patients and others to evaluate a hospital’s previous safety record.”
The most recent score also found that preventing errors, accidents and infections has not significantly improved among hospitals, except the Long Beach hospitals.
Hospitals, however, have made statistically significant improvements since last fall on pre- and post-surgery safety processes and implementation of computerized medication prescribing systems, the press release stated.
Hospital Safety Scores are calculated by a panel of patient safety experts and are peer-reviewed, transparent and free to the public. The scoring uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce an A-F score, according to the site.
Visit Hospital Safety Score to find the grades of local hospitals.
This article was updated Wednesday, June 3 with more information on St. Mary Medical Center.