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Health & Fitness

Palos Community Hospital Excels in Patient Safety – Awarded an 'A' in Spring 2014 Hospital Safety Score

Designed to rate how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections, the latest Hospital Safety Score honored Palos Community Hospital with an “A” – its top grade in patient safety. The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety and is administered by The Leapfrog Group (Leapfrog), an independent industry watchdog. The first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, the score is free to the public and designed to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.

“Earning an ‘A’ rating from The Leapfrog Group further demonstrates the dedication of our staff at Palos,” says Terrence Moisan, M.D., interim CEO of Palos Community Hospital. “We are committed to providing our patients with quality care in an environment focused on safety.”

“Safety should come first for our families when we pick a hospital, because errors and infections are common and deadly,” said Leah Binder, president & CEO of The Leapfrog Group, which produces the Hospital Safety Score. “No hospital is perfect, but we congratulate the Board, clinicians, administration, and staff of Palos Community Hospital for achieving an ‘A’ and showing us that you made the well-being of you patients your top priority.”  

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Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in spring 2014, with about 32-percent receiving an “A” grade. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, and its website offers a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades.

About The Leapfrog Group

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The Hospital Safety Score (www.hospitalsafetyscore.org) is an initiative of The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org), 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 Palos Community Hospital

Palos Community Hospital’s ongoing mission is to strive to provide quality health care. By combining the medical expertise of highly skilled physicians and nurses with state-of-the-art technology and a comprehensive approach to treatment, Palos is committed to delivering compassionate health care in a healing environment.

Palos Community Hospital (www.PalosCommunityHospital.org) is a 428-bed not-for-profit health care facility located in Palos Heights, Ill. As one of the area’s leading hospitals, we have been serving the communities of the Southwest suburbs for 40 years. Our more than 500 affiliate physicians represent more than 40 specialties and subspecialties.

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