Business

Pardee earns an A in safety again

By Bill Moss, Published: May 9, 2014

Pardee Hospital has received a top grade for its record of protecting patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent industry watchdog, awarded Pardee an "A" in its spring 2014 Hospital Safety Score.

"Receiving this award three consecutive times reinforces the importance of safety here at Pardee. I am proud to serve alongside these fine individuals, who remain committed to providing the very best care to our patients," said Jay Kirby, President and CEO, Pardee Hospital.
The Leapfrog Group's hospital safety rating is the only rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety. The Leapfrog scores are free to the public and designed to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.
"Safety should come first for our families when we pick a hospital, because errors and infections are common and deadly," Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. "No hospital is perfect, but we congratulate the co-workers of Pardee for achieving an "A" and showing us that Pardee makes the well-being of patients a top priority."
Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog's Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a grade of "A," "B," "C," "D," or "F" as a measure of a hospital's overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in spring 2014, with about 32 percent receiving an "A" grade. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, and its website offers a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades.

The Leapfrog study gave a grade of B to Mission Health in Asheville and Park Ridge Health in Fletcher; Haywood Regional Medical Center, Rutherford Hospital, Greenville Memorial and Spartanburg Regional got C's. Pardee's management partner, UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, received a B. Another UNC system partner facility, Rex Hospital in Raleigh received an A, as did Duke University and Duke Regional hospitals in Durham. The Leapfrog site did not list scores for Transylvania Regional or St. Luke's in Tryon.
To see how Pardee's score compares locally and nationally, and to access safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. Consumers can also download a free Hospital Safety Score app.
The Hospital Safety Score is an initiative of the Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org), a national nonprofit organization using the collective leverage of large purchasers of health care to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward the highest performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000 with support from the Business Roundtable and national funders and is now independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.