PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical nationally recognized with an ‘A’ for Fall 2021 Leapfrog hospital safety grade

||| FROM ANNE WILLIAMS for PEACEHEALTH ST JOSEPH MEDICAL CENTER |||

Bellingham, Wash. – PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center was awarded an ‘A’ in the fall 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, a distinction recognizing the hospital’s achievements in protecting patients from harm and providing safer health care. The Leapfrog Group is an independent national watchdog organization committed to health care quality and safety.

The Safety Grade assigns an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade to all general hospitals across the country and is updated every six months. It is based on a hospital’s performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other harms to patients in their care. This is the fourth ‘A’ in a row for PeaceHealth St. Joseph.

“I am very proud of our caregivers and physicians and their ongoing dedication and commitment of delivering high-quality care every day, said Chuck Prosper, chief executive. “Particularly given the challenging past year-and-a-half of providing care during a pandemic, this grade is a true testament that we are providing exceptional care for our community.”

These are some of the areas in which PeaceHealth St. Joseph exceeded the national average:

• ICU Physician Staffing: PeaceHealth St. Joseph staffs intensive care units with physicians who have training in critical care medicine.
• Computerized Physician Order Entry/Bar Code Medication Administration: Systems are in place to reduce medication errors in the hospital.
• Culture of Safety—Leadership Structures and Systems: The hospital raises key stakeholders’ awareness of our organization’s efforts to improve patient safety and holds the board, senior administrative leadership, nursing and physician leadership and frontline caregivers directly accountable for results.
• Culture of Safety—Measurement, Feedback and Intervention: The hospital measures the internal culture, provides feedback to the leadership and staff and undertake interventions that will reduce patient safety risk.

Developed under the guidance of a national Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety
Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.

To see PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center’s full grade details and access patient tips for staying safe in the hospital, visit hospitalsafetygrade.org.

About PeaceHealth 
PeaceHealth, based in Vancouver, Wash., is a not-for-profit Catholic health system offering care to communities in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. PeaceHealth has approximately 16,000 caregivers, a group practice with more than 1,200 providers and 10 medical centers serving both urban and rural communities throughout the Northwest. In 1890, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace founded what has become PeaceHealth. The Sisters shared expertise and transferred wisdom from one medical center to another, always finding the best way to serve the unmet need for healthcare in their communities. Today, PeaceHealth is the legacy of the founding Sisters and continues with a spirit of respect, stewardship, collaboration and social justice in fulfilling its Mission. Visit us online at peacehealth.org.

About The Leapfrog Group
Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps forward in the quality and safety of American health care. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey and new Leapfrog Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) Survey collect and transparently report hospital and ASC performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information, they need to make informed
decisions. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Leapfrog’s other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections.