Regions Hospital among elite group of top hospitals for safety and quality

ST. PAUL, Minn. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Regions Hospital is among the safest hospitals in the country, according to a new national ranking from The Leapfrog Group, a respected independent health care quality rating organization. Regions is one of only 67 top urban hospitals nationwide and only two in Minnesota that were named 2012 Leapfrog Top Hospitals. Results of the study are available at leapfroggroup.org.

The Top Hospitals designation, the most competitive hospital quality award in the nation, focuses on four areas of patient safety: the use of computer physician order entry to prevent medication errors; standards for doing high-risk procedures such as heart surgery; protocols and policies to reduce medical errors; and adequate nurse and physician staffing. Other measures include progress in preventing hospital-acquired infections and adopting policies on the handling of serious medical errors.

Initiatives that helped Regions earned the Top Hospital designation include:

• Safe labor and delivery. The Leapfrog Group recognized Regions for having one of the lowest rates in the nation (1 percent) of elective early inductions of labor.
• Surgical Safety Checklist. Regions uses a 19 item safety check list developed by the World Health Organization and similar to what pilots use before every flight.
• Preventing hospital readmissions. Since 2009, the 30-day hospital readmission rate at Regions has decreased from 11.5 percent to 9.7 percent; less than half the rate of readmissions reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
• Reducing hospital acquired infections. Regions eliminated central line associated bloodstream infections in the surgical intensive care unit for more than a year.
• Saving lives from sepsis. A pilot program in the emergency department reduced the number of deaths from sepsis to one of the lowest rates in the nation (12 percent).