Recognized – Again! - for Our Culture of Safety
I know these last several weeks have been extraordinarily challenging. I’m so impressed by – and proud of – your unwavering attention to caring for our patients, safeguarding our community and ensuring that every person who enters our hospital receives the same, incredible level of care. While the COVID-19 emergency continues, I’m delighted to share some much-needed good news:
Adventist Health Glendale has received its 11th consecutive A grade from patient safety organization The Leapfrog Group, the only hospital in Glendale or Burbank to receive the top grade. The Spring 2020 Hospital Safety Grades were published today. Of the 2,600 hospitals nationally that are graded twice annually, only 86 hospitals nationwide, and 11 in California, have received straight A’s since spring 2015.
This incredible achievement recognizes your continuous improvement in patient safety, placing us among the top 3.3% of hospitals graded nationwide. Through the end of 2019, the period which was reviewed, our number of CLABSI, CAUTI, C. diff and MRSA cases all fell. This validates our attention to safety, proper hygiene and innovation having a positive effect on outcomes.
I’m proud that such an environment of safety is embedded in the culture of our medical center. We’ve all been hyper-focused on the COVID pandemic, and managing it so well, without missing a step in our ongoing pursuit of safety.
This culture of safety will support resuming operations – and we have reached a point in this pandemic where we are ready to begin that process, though very cautiously. We plan to resume essential surgeries and procedures as early as Monday. No elective cases will be scheduled. Our chairs of Surgery, Anesthesia, Cardiology and GI will review cases that cannot wait and begin scheduling those surgeries and procedures. We will also evaluate on a daily basis our census and the demands on our hospital from COVID-19. If the number of COVID patients rises from current levels, we’ll have to decompress the hospital and slow down on surgeries and procedures again.
We hope that won’t be the case, but hope is not a plan. We are moving forward deliberately and with care for our patients and staff top of mind. We also recognize there are many in the community who have delayed seeking critical care, leading to irreparable harm and, sadly, some preventable deaths. This is so disheartening when we have the resources to treat them. We are actively marketing to our community our Emergency Department and our entire hospital’s readiness and safety. Our new Leapfrog score will reinforce that message.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public to use in considering which hospital to visit.
Even in this changed world, the Leapfrog score will help to assure consumers of Adventist Health Glendale’s consistently high standards of patient safety – and that we live up to our promise of delivering health, wholeness and hope.
