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Healthcare Finance Logo
May 10, 2016

Once-failing hospitals say accountability, transparency key to surviving fallout from failing patient safety grades

When Leapfrog released their Spring 2016 patient safety grades recently, 15 hospitals got slapped with a very public 'F' grade casting a spotlight on them that no institution wants. But with more patients weighing public hospital grades, experts, as well as a few hospitals which have faced down bad grades, say denial is the last thing a poorly marked hospital should do.
Los Angeles Times logo
January 17, 2015

How safe is your hospital? A look at California ratings

Consumers might think twice about dining at a restaurant with a poor health grade posted in the window. And patient advocates say it shouldn't be any different when going to the hospital. A detailed look at performance data shows many California hospitals continue to struggle with medical errors and injuries to patients — despite industrywide efforts to remedy those problems.
Altarum Institute logo
December 4, 2014

Consumers Will Choose Safer Hospitals 97% of the Time, Regardless of Cost

According to a new study, when patients are shown Hospital Safety Score grades and cost information together, consumers will choose safer hospitals 97% of the time, regardless of cost. These results, from a study titled “The Effects of Hospital Safety Scores, Total Price, Out-of-Pocket Cost, and Household Income on Consumers’ Self-Reported Choice of Hospitals,” can be found in the latest issue of The Journal of Patient Safety.
msnbc logo
April 30, 2014

Can we make US medicine less dangerous?

Modern medicine works indisputable wonders when it’s delivered carefully and appropriately. But it’s easy to forget how much harm it can cause when something goes awry. Medical errors kill an estimated 440,000 U.S. patients every year—well over 1,000 every day—and harm many times that number. The toll puts medicine itself in the same league as cancer and heart disease as a leading cause of death. Yet until recently, no one was even measuring the devastation, let alone working to reduce it.
The New York Times logo
December 4, 2013

To Make Hospitals Less Deadly, a Dose of Data

Going to the hospital is supposed to be good for you. But in an alarming number of cases, it isn’t. And often it’s fatal. In fact it is the most dangerous thing most people will do. Available statistics on hospital safety don’t tell the public what they need to know to make informed decisions. Until very recently, health care experts believed that preventable hospital error caused some 98,000 deaths a year in the United States — a figure based on 1984 data. But a new report from the Journal of Patient Safety using updated data holds such error responsible for many more deaths — probably around some 440,000 per year.
HealthLeaders Media logo
October 23, 2013

Leapfrog Releases Another Hospital Safety Report Card

The latest round of scores that measure rates of errors and infections, indicators of safe practices, shows an increase in the number of hospitals that earned the lowest score. Leapfrog's CEO Leah Binder calls that "a troubling trend." The Leapfrog Group released its fourth safety report card for general acute care hospitals Wednesday noting that overall, there's been "very little improvement" in how well providers are preventing patient harm.
Journal of Patient Safety logo
September 1, 2013

A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care

The epidemic of patient harm in hospitals must be taken more seriously if it is to be curtailed. Fully engaging patients and their advocates during hospital care, systematically seeking the patients’ voice in identifying harms, transparent accountability for harm, and intentional correction of root causes of harm will be necessary to accomplish this goal.