Four hospitals in the Greater Lehigh Valley were among 31 Pennsylvania hospitals that earned an A for patient safety from The Leapfrog Group’s annual spring report released today.
The national nonprofit watchdog group has published hospital safety grades twice a year since 2012.
The hospitals that earned the top rating are: Grand View Health in Sellersville; Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono in East Stroudsburg; Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown; and St. Luke’s Hospital-Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township.
Grand View, LVH-Pocono, Sacred Heart and St. Luke’s-Anderson also earned the top rating when the fall report was published.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade report graded more than 2,600 hospitals in the U.S., including 132 in Pennsylvania. The report is intended to help consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections acquired in hospitals.
“We all want the hospitals serving our communities to provide the best in patient care,” said Tom Croyle, president of the Lehigh Valley Business Coalition on Healthcare.
“As the Patient Safety Grade reaches a five-year milestone providing information to consumers, we should be proud of the work that has been done to improve patient safety, but recognize that much work remains to be done.”
The grade uses national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement, according to Leapfrog.
