A national patient safety watchdog, the Leapfrog Group, has awarded St. Anthony Regional Hospital an “A” ranking on their Hospital Safety Score. The latest scores, released in April, assign letter grades to institutions to provide a more complete picture of patient safety in the country’s health care system. St. Anthony President and CEO, Ed Smith, said patient safety and satisfaction is their number one priority and this ranking highlights not only the outstanding work done daily by doctors, nurses and skilled professionals, but also their ability to make a true difference in the lives of community members. The St. Anthony teams continually strive to remain up-to-date on the latest technology, education and care practices; which in the past year has resulted in updated, preprogrammed IV pumps, upgraded telemetry monitoring systems and IV monitoring during opioid use as well as improved technology for reviewing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Hospital Safety Score uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign the letter grades to over 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. For the first time, this score includes five measures of patient-reported experiences with the hospitals as well as two of the most common infections, C.diff and MRSA.
