Your Safety is Our Priority

Mistakes shouldn’t happen, especially in healthcare. An estimated 206,000 avoidable deaths occur at hospitals every year, and Grinnell Regional Medical Center is doing its part to make sure that none of those happen here. Safety is important, and GRMC takes it seriously. This spring, GRMC received an “A” quality safety rating from the Leapfrog Group®, a national patient safety initiative comprised of employers and other large consumers of healthcare. The name, Leapfrog Group, sets the intent that it will help hospitals show “leaps of improvement.” As shown by the A rating, some of those leaps of improvement happened at GRMC.

Each year, the hospital completes a voluntary safety survey, providing statistics on patient safety and hospital performance. The safest hospitals – those who score at least .6 standard deviations above the mean - are given an A rating, which less than a third of all hospitals that complete the survey receive). According to the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, 33,459 lives could be saved every year if B, C, D, and F ranked hospitals had the same safety performance as A hospitals.

This is an exciting designation; it shows that the processes and procedures put in place here at GRMC meet national standards. According to Erica Mobley at the Leapfrog group, “‘A’ hospitals maintain a laser focus on safety that permeates from executive leadership down through all levels of staff.” GRMC puts safety first, and this rating shows that that is paying off. For patients, it should be reassuring to know that GRMC is one of the safer hospitals in the area. The journey doesn’t stop here, however. Having made the A rating, GRMC will work to keep it, and continue making safety improvements.

For more information about hospital safety ratings, and to see how GRMC compares to other hospitals, check out http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/h/grinnell-regional-medical-center?findBy=zip&zip_code=50112&radius=50&agree=undefined&rPos=300&rSort=distance.

Source:

http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/managed-healthcare-executive/news/grade-hospitals-have-50-fewer-avoidable-deaths

Written by Anya Silva, GRMC summer intern