HealthGrades Patient Safety Award 2010

Evangelical Community Hospital is the recipient of the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award for the third consecutive year (2010, 2009 and 2008) demonstrating our commitment to patient safety.

This award puts Evangelical in the top 5% of all hospitals in the country for patient safety, sharing this distinction with only 238 others.

HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization, developed this award to give patients more information about choosing a hospital. They assess 12 different patient safety indicators to identify the best-performing hospitals.

Our Focus on Patient Safety

Even before this topic gained national attention, Evangelical was developing special programs to improve upon patient safety measures. Those programs include:

• MRSA Collaborative Program – an ongoing regional group that works on ways to reduce and eliminate healthcare-acquired infections, and evaluates best practices across the state.
• Five Million Lives Campaign - a national voluntary initiative to protect patients from five million incidents of medical harm over the next two years. Evangelical is very active in this program; it stemmed from the previously successful 100 Thousand Lives Campaign. Since initiation of this campaign the Hospital’s central line infection rate and ventilator assisted pneumonia rates have been near zero and Evangelical has become a mentor hospital for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Other hospitals call Evangelical for advice on how to achieve these goals.
• Outreach to the Community – The Community Health Education Department works with children and adults of all ages on the importance of proper health and hygiene.
• Good Catch Program – an initiative established by Evangelical’s Medical Affairs Division to recognize individuals who have caught potential errors before they are made, or found ways to improve upon procedures to reduce the risk of errors.
• Patient ID Policy – A policy established where each patient is asked a series of questions before any procedure is performed to verify that the correct patient is receiving the ordered medication or treatment.

Learn more about the 2010 award