Union Hospital in Dover is in the national spotlight again, ranked among the top five percent of all hospitals for patient safety. HealthGrades, the nation?s leading independent healthcare ratings organization, compared more than 5,000 hospitals across the nation and named Union Hospital as a recipient of the Patient Safety Excellence Award.
Last week it was announced that UH had been recognized for the second consecutive year as a recipient of HealthGrades? Emergency Medicine Excellence Award.
The importance of patient safety in a hospital cannot be over emphasized according to Carey Gardner, director of development and community relations.
?These can be matters of life and death,? Gardner said. ?The HealthGrades study found that patients in a top ranked hospital like Union Hospital were 46% less likely to experience one or more of the 13 patient safety events studied compared to a poorly ranked hospital.?
Gardner said when a patient safety event occurs it can contribute to a longer length of stay in the hospital, add to the cost of care, and can even cause death. Some of the patient safety indicators evaluated in the HealthGrades study included bloodstream infection, collapsed lung, bed sore, and a variety of post-operative events like hemorrhage, respiratory failure, embolism, and sepsis.
?Patient safety can be as simple as confirming the patient?s identity and as complex as verifying the correct medication dosage and preventing adverse drug interactions,? Gardner said. ?Every person at the hospital has a role to play in reducing the risk of an accident, infection, or mistake that would harm the patient.?
The eighth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals study analyzed nearly 40 million hospitalization records from approximately 5,000 hospitals nationwide that participate in the Medicare program. Participation in the HealthGrades study is not voluntary, and hospitals cannot choose to opt out of the analysis.
?We?ve seen great advances in medical care in the last few decades, but along with these miraculous advances come greater and greater risks. Hospitals like Union Hospital have shown definitively that it is possible to provide the best in medical care while still focusing on the safety of the patient,? said Rick May, MD, vice president of Clinical Quality Improvement at HealthGrades and co-author of the study.
In the HealthGrades analysis, the following are the patient safety indicators studied:
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? Foreign body left in after procedure |
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? Death in low mortality Diagnostic Related Groupings (DRGs) |
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? Pressure ulcer (bed sores) |
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? Death among surgical inpatients with serious treatable complications (previously known as ?Failure to Rescue?) |
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? Iatrogenic pneumothorax (collapsed lung) |
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? Catheter-related bloodstream infections |
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? Post-operative hip fracture |
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? Post-operative hemorrhage or hematoma |
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? Post-operative physiologic and metabolic derangements |
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? Post-operative respiratory failure |
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? Post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis |
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? Post-operative sepsis |
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? Post-operative abdominal wound dehiscence |
