For immediate release: June 6, 2012
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. – Cooley Dickinson Hospital was honored with an “A” Hospital Safety ScoreSM by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits.
The Hospital Safety ScoreSM was calculated under the guidance of The Leapfrog Group’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel using publicly available data on patient injuries, medical and medication errors, and infections. U.S. hospitals were assigned an A, B, C, D, or F for their safety.
“Cooley Dickinson earned an A from the Hospital Safety Score because our doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, and staff take the steps necessary to ensure that our patients receive safe, high-quality care,” said Craig Melin, president and CEO. “This award is further validation from an independent authority that our staff is continuously focused on improving quality of care.”
The Hospital Safety Score A grade places Cooley Dickinson in the top 25 percent of the 2,652 hospitals The Leapfrog Group rated. Last month, another independent rating organization, HealthGrades®, ranked Cooley Dickinson in the top 5 percent of 5,000 hospitals it rated for patient safety, awarding CDH the Patient Safety Excellence Award™.
“Ultimately, our patients benefit most from our safety efforts, because they are less likely to experience complications or worse at Cooley Dickinson,” Melin added.
“It’s The Leapfrog Group’s goal to give patients the information they need and deserve before even entering a hospital,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “We congratulate the hospitals that earned an ‘A’ and we look forward to the day when all hospitals in the U.S. will earn the highest scores for putting patient safety first.”
To see Cooley Dickinson’s scores as they compare nationally and locally, visit www.hospitalsafetyscore.org, the Hospital Safety ScoreSM website, which also provides information on how the public can protect themselves and loved ones during a hospital stay.
The Leapfrog Group calculated the Hospital Safety Score using 26 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from infections, injuries, and medical and medication errors.
About Cooley Dickinson Hospital
Cooley Dickinson, a full-service community hospital, is 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. It is the only hospital in the Springfield area to achieve the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award™ for four consecutive years. Cooley Dickinson’s staff of 1,650 professionals and more than 300 affiliated physicians comprise a network of emergency, surgical, clinical, rehabilitative, hospice and home care expertise that treats 40,000 emergency patients per year, delivers 800 babies, and collaborates with Massachusetts General Hospital to deliver comprehensive cancer care. Cooley Dickinson's vision is to make the mid-Pioneer Valley the nation’s model healthy community, able to provide local access to the most advanced clinical treatments in a caring and neighborly setting. Learn more at www.cooley-dickinson.org
About The Leapfrog Group
The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) is a national 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.
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