Rockford Memorial Hospital announced today that it has been named a 2008 Distinguished Hospital for Patient SafetyTM, as part of an independent study by HealthGrades, the nation’s leading health care ratings company.
This distinction reflects Rockford Memorial’s performance among the top five percent nationally for patient safety outcomes, according to HealthGrades’ fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, the largest of its kind. Rockford Memorial is one of only 13 hospitals in Illinois and the only hospital in Rockford to receive this recognition. It is also the second consecutive year the hospital has placed in the top five percent of hospitals nationwide for patient safety. Nationally, there were 249 award recipients out of nearly 5,000 hospitals evaluated.
HealthGrades' analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals had, on average, a 43-percent lower chance of experiencing one or more medical errors compared to the poorest-performing hospitals. If all U.S. hospitals had performed at the level of HealthGrades 2008 Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety™, approximately 220,106 patient safety incidents and 37,214 Medicare deaths could have been avoided while saving the U.S. approximately $2.0 billion during 2004 to 2006.
The fifth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study applies methodology developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify the incident rates of 13 patient safety indicators among Medicare patients at virtually all of the nation's nearly 5,000 nonfederal hospitals. Additionally, HealthGrades applied its methodology to identify the best-performing hospitals, or Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety™, which represent the top five percent of all U.S. hospitals.
Ratings for individual hospitals were posted today to HealthGrades' consumer Web site, www.healthgrades.com.
The following are the 13 patient-safety incidents used to identify HealthGrades Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety™:
• Death in low-mortality DRGs
• Decubitus ulcer
• Failure to rescue
• Foreign body left in during procedure
• Iatrogenic pneumothorax
• Selected infections due to medical care
• Post-operative hemorrhage or hematoma
• Post-operative hip fracture
• Post-operative physiologic metabolic
derangement
• Post-operative pulmonary embolism or
deep vein thrombosis
• Post-operative respiratory failure
• Post-operative sepsis
• Post-operative abdominal wound
dehiscence
About HealthGrades
Health Grades, Inc. (Nasdaq: HGRD) is the leading healthcare ratings organization, providing ratings and profiles of hospitals, nursing homes and physicians. Millions of consumers and many of the nation’s largest employers, health plans and hospitals rely on HealthGrades’ independent ratings and decision support resources to make healthcare decisions based on the quality and cost of care. More information on the company can be found at http://www.healthgrades.com.