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NORTHAMPTON — Cooley Dickinson Hospital has been ranked in the top 5 percent of all U.S. hospitals in patient safety by HealthGrades®, the country's leading independent health care ratings organization.
Cooley Dickinson is one of just 12 hospitals in Massachusetts to receive the 2011 recognition. It is the only hospital in the Springfield area to achieve the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award™ for three consecutive years.
 "Achieving this recognition for a third year is a direct result of our doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, and staff’s taking the steps necessary to ensure that our patients receive safe, high-quality care," said Craig Melin, president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson. “Being among only 268 hospitals in the country that HealthGrades recognizes with this award demonstrates our staff’s continuous focus on improving quality for our patients.”
He added, “While we’re pleased as a hospital to be recognized, the ultimate beneficiary of our safety efforts is our patients.”
Patients at hospitals in the top 5 percent experienced 46 percent fewer patient safety errors, on average, compared to poorly performing hospitals, according to HealthGrades. In addition, if all hospitals performed at this level, HealthGrades estimated that 174,358 patient safety events and 20,688 Medicare deaths nationwide could potentially have been avoided.
HealthGrades used Medicare data and 13 patient safety indicators from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to calculate patient safety incidence rates for the nation’s hospitals. These indicators identify the best-performing organizations: the Patient Safety Excellence Award™ Hospitals HealthGrades said it developed this award to give patients more information about choosing a hospital.
The Patient Safety Excellence Award™ hospitals were named in HealthGrades’ eighth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals study. Rick May, MD, vice president of clinical quality improvement at HealthGrades is co-author of the study.
“We’ve seen great advances in medical care in the last few decades, but along with these miraculous advances come greater and greater risks,” May said. “Hospitals like Cooley Dickinson have shown definitively that it is possible to provide the best in medical care while still focusing on the safety of the patient,”
The HealthGrades analysis used the following patient safety indicators. Foreign body left in after procedure; death in low mortality Diagnostic Related Groupings (DRGs); pressure ulcer (bed sores); death among surgical inpatients with serious treatable complications (previously known as “Failure to Rescue”); Iatrogenic pneumothorax (collapsed lung); and catheter-related bloodstream infections. In addition: post-operative hip fracture; post-operative hemorrhage or hematoma; post-operative physiologic and metabolic derangements; post-operative respiratory failure; post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis; post-operative sepsis; and post-operative abdominal wound dehiscence (premature opening along the sutures).
Visit www.cooley-dickinson.org or www.healthgrades.com to learn more or read the Patient Safety in American Hospitals study.
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