Hospital accepts HealthGrades Patient Safety Award

LEWISBURG— Evangelical Community Hospital recently accepted, for the third consecutive year, the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award. HealthGrades is the nation’s leading independent healthcare ratings company. Earning this distinction places Evangelical in the top five percent of all US hospitals in terms of patient safety.

“We are honored and delighted to share this news with our staff and the community at large, and to accept this award today from HealthGrades,” Evangelical President and CEO Michael N. O’Keefe said. “I truly thank each of our employees for their contribution to Patient Safety Excellence every day, but especially the nurses, physicians, techs, aides, therapists and other clinical staff. It is because of their exemplary skills, caring and compassion that our patient satisfaction scores continue to be so high.”

If all hospitals performed at the level of Patient Safety Excellence Award™ hospitals like Evangelical, approximately 218,572 patient safety events and 22,590 Medicare deaths could have been avoided while saving the U.S. approximately $2.1 billion in excess costs from 2006 through 2008.

HealthGrades applies methodology developed by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify the incidence rates of 15 patient safety indicators among Medicare patients to measure all hospitals in the nation. HealthGrades then identifies the best-performing hospitals, or Patient Safety Excellence Award Winners, which represent the top five percent of all US hospitals.

 

PHOTO CAPTION: Evangelical Community Hospital recently accepted, for the third consecutive year, the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award. HealthGrades is the nation’s leading independent healthcare ratings company. Earning this distinction places Evangelical in the top five percent of all US hospitals in terms of patient safety. On hand for the award presentation were (l-r) HealthGrades consultant Jackie Greiner, Evangelical President and CEO Michael N. O’Keefe and Vice President-Medical Affairs J. Lawrence Ginsburg, MD, MMM.