Kaiser Permanente Hospitals Receive Highest Ratings in Latest Patient Safety Scorecard

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Oct 30, 2014, 12:00 ET

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- When Hal Miner was rushed to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Southern California several years ago, complaining of severe headaches and unable to write his own name, the emergency room medical staff immediately sized up the situation and ordered a CT scan. After the results came back, there was no time to wait: Hal needed brain surgery that night.

"We have to do brain surgery tonight on both sides of the brain," Barbara Miner, Hal's wife, remembered the neurosurgeon saying. "If we don't, he won't be alive by tomorrow."

In situations like Hal's, the care team has little time to make the right diagnosis and come up with a safe and appropriate care plan. Hal and Barbara credit the quick-acting care team and skilled emergency room physicians for saving Hal's life. It's this standard of safe, high quality care that has become the hallmark of Kaiser Permanente hospitals.

This week, the Leapfrog Group's biannual Hospital Safety Score report recognized 32 Kaiser Permanente hospitals with "A" grades and five others with "B" grades.

"We take patient safety seriously and, having established a culture of continuous improvement, we consistently look for new and improved ways to prevent illness, detect disease and treat chronic conditions more effectively," said Patrick Courneya, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer for Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan.

While 32 of Kaiser Permanente's hospitals included in the report received an "A" grade, the majority of the nation's hospitals, notably those in California, did not fare as well:

Of the 2,520 hospitals nationwide included in the report, only 31 percent (790) received an "A" grade.
In California, it was only slightly better. Among the 215 non-Kaiser Permanente hospitals in the state, only 36 percent (77) received an "A" grade.

The Leapfrog Group, a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage, created the Hospital Safety Score to help consumers decide which hospitals to go to and which to avoid. The report card assigns an A, B, C, D or F letter grade to hospitals based on 28 variables, including rates of infections, medication mix-ups and health care-acquired injuries. It uses data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the American Hospital Association and its own Leapfrog survey.

The complete list of Leapfrog Hospital Safety Scores can be found at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.

Kaiser Permanente operates 38 hospitals — 35 in California, two in Oregon, and one in Hawaii. In this new report, based primarily on 2013 data, one Kaiser Permanente hospital, Westside Medical Center (Hillsboro, Ore.), which opened in mid-2013, was not included in the report because it was too new.

This Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score honor is the most recent in a string of accolades for patient safety, quality, and service earned by Kaiser Permanente hospitals and health plans:

Six Kaiser Permanente regions, representing more than 9 million members, received top marks in J.D. Power and Associates' 2014 Member Satisfaction Study.
Kaiser Permanente Medicare health plans received No. 1 rankings for 2014 in 21 effectiveness-of-care measures, far more than any other health plan in the nation, according to the National Committee for Quality Assurance's Quality Compass® dataset.
Kaiser Permanente's Medicare health plans for 2015 received a 5-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the highest ranking possible, in six of its seven geographical regions.
Kaiser Permanente was rated by the National Committee for Quality Assurance as having the three highest ranked Medicare plans in the nation for 2014-15.
The Leapfrog Group named 19 Kaiser Permanente hospitals as 2013 "Top Hospitals," an honor that recognizes medical centers for their outstanding success in areas such as reducing infection rates, safety practices, mortality rates for common procedures and measures of efficiency.
In 2013, Kaiser Permanente received Platinum Honors for Health Care Consumer Engagement and Protection by URAC, one of the nation's leading health-care accreditation organizations and an important advocate for health care quality and patient safety.

About The Leapfrog Group
The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) is a national nonprofit organization using the collective leverage of large purchasers of health care to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward the highest performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000 with support from the Business Roundtable and national funders, and is now independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.

About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve approximately 9.5 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org/share.

Contact:

Mark Camps

Office: (510) 625-5624 | Mobile: (510) 529-1854

[email protected]

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SOURCE Kaiser Permanente