Awards And Certifications From May 9

Four DMC Hospitals Earn Top Grades from the 2013 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Scores Again: Four Detroit Medical Center hospitals -- DMC Detroit Receiving Hospital, DMC Harper University & Hutzel Women's Hospitals, DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital and DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital -- have received "A" rankings from the Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Scores for 2013, making DMC Hospitals among the safest in the country. Hospital Safety Scores are calculated under the guidance of an eight-member Leapfrog Blue Ribbon expert panel of patient safety experts who used publicly available hospital safety data. U.S. hospitals were evaluated on preventable patient injuries, medication errors and infections, and each was assigned a letter grade of A, B, C, D, or F reflecting on how safe hospitals are for patients. These scores empower patients to make informed choices about where they and their family will seek medical care and are meant to significantly reduce the 180,000 annual deaths attributed to hospital errors by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm. The DMC has focused on several key initiatives to help drive quality improvement. The first is the electronic medical record. DMC hospitals are among the most advanced in the country for their health information technology. With Computerized Physician Order Entry and bar code scanning, medication errors have been reduced significantly. Quality and safety dashboards are included in daily workflow through the EMR, which allows staff to focus on quality in "real time." Electronic records also allow for care to move away from memory based practice with improved standardization, and quick access to data. Other initiatives have included a successful focus on reducing hospital acquired infections, a system-wide approach to intensive care, and more quality and safety training. This is the fifth year in a row DMC has earned top honors from the Leapfrog Group.More at www.dmc.org.