Newport News, Va. - Riverside hospitals earned top marks for patient safety performance in the Fall 2019 Hospital Safety Grade scores released this week by The Leapfrog Group, health system leadership announced today.
In the current ratings, Riverside Tappahannock Hospital and Riverside Walter Reed Hospital were named “A” grade hospitals, and Riverside Doctors’ Hospital Williamsburg and Riverside Regional Medical Center earned “B” grades.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is the only hospital rating focused exclusively on hospital safety. Its A, B, C, D or F letter grades are a quick way for consumers to choose the safest hospital to seek care.
“These strong rankings are a testament to the investment the health system has put in quality and the patient experience, and the dedication our team members bring to the patients they serve each day.” said Mike Dacey, M.D., President and Chief Operations Officer for Riverside Health.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is a public service provided by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit organization committed to driving quality, safety, and transparency in the U.S. health system. The Safety Grade is becoming the gold standard measure of patient safety, cited in MSNBC, The New York Times, and AARP The Magazine.
“We recognize that the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade Ratings is one of several quality measurement tools that our patients consider when making important health care decisions,” Dacey said. “We’ve made a promise to care for others as we would care for those we love, and that means always taking the opportunity to evaluate and listen to the third-party organizations who are tasked with ensuring there are no gaps in care.”
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades (formerly known as Hospital Safety Scores) are assigned to over 2,600 general acute-care hospitals across the nation twice annually. Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital is not among the hospitals graded by Leapfrog.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and other supplemental data sources.
Taken together, those performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. The Safety Grade includes 28 measures, all currently in use by national measurement and reporting programs. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.
Leapfrog works under the guidance of an Expert Panel to select appropriate measures and develop a scoring methodology. The Expert Panel is made up of patient safety experts from across the country.