The LeapFrog Group was started 10 years ago by an employer group to gauge quality of care in hospitals based on the Institute of Medicine’s challenge to reduce preventable mistakes. The organization invites hospitals to submit quality information and sets rigorous criteria including:
- Implementing computerized clinician order entry- this has been shown to reduce medication errors by 85%
- Meet performance standards for complex surgical procedures
- Meet staffing requirements for Intensive Care Units- shown to reduce mortality by 40% or more.
- Achieve standards for efficiency based on outcomes, incidence of complications, etc.
Regions Hospital was named among the nations top 45 hospitals.
Computerized systems has a lot to do with it- less than 20% of hospitals in the US have taken the leap.
Congrats!!
JB
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Statistics are wonderful but my experience at Regions was not. Following a procedure with anesthesia and while waiting to be escorted to the lobby, I was unamused to watch a party of three point fingers at each other when explaining why my pain medication had not been ordered. Omissions of this sort likely are not included in the numerator but are in the denominator thus skewing the statistics. Had I suspected this would happen, I would have taken great pains to ensure the meds I was promised were delivered.