All three hospitals in Rush System again given 'A's' by The Leapfrog Group
(April 24, 2018) - For the fourth consecutive time, all three Rush system hospitals — Rush University Medical Center, Rush Oak Park Hospital and Rush Copley Medical Center — have received an ‘A’ grade for patient safety, the best possible, from the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit patient safety watchdog organization. Leapfrog announced the latest of its twice-yearly safety grades on April 24, awarding A grades to 750 hospitals out of the 2,479 in the United States that it evaluated for their commitment to reducing errors, infections, and accidents that can harm patients.
Rush Oak Park Hospital received its fourth consecutive A and its sixth overall.
“Receiving this recognition demonstrates the commitment and the dedication of the medical, nursing and professional staff at Rush Oak Park Hospital,” said Bruce Elegant, president and CEO of Rush Oak Park Hospital. “The A grade significance establishes a level of confidence for our patients that care provided at Rush adheres to the highest quality and safety standards.”
Rush University Medical Center and Rush Copley Medical Center now have received A grades each of the 13 times the Leapfrog Group has rated hospitals.
“Many patients aren’t even aware that medical safety is a consideration when choosing a hospital, and they shouldn’t need to worry about it. At Rush, we understand that providing safe medical care is essential to providing excellent medical care, and we put a great deal of work and thought into safeguarding our patients,” said Dr. Larry Goodman, CEO of the Rush system. Goodman also is CEO of Rush University Medical Center.
“The ‘A’ grades for safety that our hospitals have received from Leapfrog repeatedly demonstrate that we’ve succeeded at providing care at a very high level of safety consistently for a long time across our entire system. It’s a great achievement for Rush and more importantly for the benefit of our patients.”
“Only a very select group of hospitals nationally continue to earn an A Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade year after year. It shows an unbroken commitment to protecting patients from preventable errors and accidents that harm and even kill too many people in our country every day,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group.
A-level care saves lives
Leapfrog used 27 measures of publicly available hospital data to assign scores of A, B, C, D or F. The score represents each hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections while they are in the hospital.
An analysis conducted for Leapfrog found that an estimated 206,021 avoidable deaths occur in hospitals in the United States each year, and that an estimated 33,439 lives could be saved annually if all hospitals performed as well as A-rated hospitals such as Rush. The study also found that the risk of avoidable death was 9 percent higher in B hospitals than A hospitals, and rose to 35 percent higher in C hospitals and 50 percent higher in D and F hospitals. Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality provided the analysis in the spring of 2016, using that cycle’s round of safety grade data.
The Leapfrog Group compiles the Hospital Safety Score under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety in order to provide the public with information that people can use to protect themselves and their families.
To see the Rush hospitals’ scores as they compare nationally and locally, and to find safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Grade website.
A grades are the latest in steady stream of honors for Rush
The Leapfrog safety scores are the latest in a consistent stream of honors for Rush University Medical Center and the other Rush System hospitals that are unique among U.S. academic health systems, including the following recognitions:
- Rush University Medical Center ranked fourth among 107 leading academic medical centers in the United States, up from fifth last year, in a national study conducted by the health care services company Vizient. It was the fifth consecutive time Rush has been ranked among the top five in the annual Quality and Accountability Study and the ninth time since the University HealthSystem Consortium, now part of Vizient, began the study in 2005.
- U.S. News & World Report ranked eight programs at Rush University Medical Center among the best in the country in the latest edition of its annual “Best Hospitals” issue.
- Rush University Medical Center received the Leapfrog Group’s Top Teaching Hospital designation (which is different from Leapfrog’s safety grade) in December.
- Rush University Medical Center and Rush Copley Medical Center each received five stars for quality of care from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ latest Hospital Compare overall rating, and Rush Oak Park Hospital received four stars.
- Rush University Medical Center received its fourth consecutive Magnet designation, the highest honor in nursing, in January 2016, and Rush Oak Park Hospital received Magnet status in March of that year.
- This March, the Human Rights Campaign — a civil rights organization that advocates for equality for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and/or queer/questioning — named Rush University Medical Center a Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality for the tenth consecutive year. The HRC also named Rush Oak Park Hospital a leader for the fifth consecutive year.
- Rush has been named one of the best hospitals to work for by indeed.com and topped the list of nurse.org’s Best Hospitals in Illinois for Nurses.
- Rush University Medical Center and Rush Oak Park Hospital repeatedly have been named among the Most Wired hospitals in the nation.
- Rush University Medical Center and Rush Oak Park Hospital both have received the Healthgrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award, which recognizes hospitals that provide an overall outstanding patient experience. Healthgrades evaluates patient experience performance by applying a scoring methodology to 10 patient experience measures, using data collected from the 32-question survey of the hospital’s own patients. Hospitals in the top 15 percent with the highest overall patient experience scores are recognized as Outstanding Patient Experience Award recipients.
