Cincinnati Children’s Included in the Leapfrog Group Annual Top Hospitals List For Its Commitment to Transparency and High Quality Care

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is one of only 65 hospitals in the United States included in the Leapfrog Group’s annual class of top hospitals. Cincinnati Children’s was selected in the children’s hospitals category.

The 2011 list also includes university and other teaching hospitals, and community hospitals in rural, suburban and urban settings.

The selection is based on the results of the Leapfrog Group’s national survey that measures hospitals’ performance in crucial areas of patient safety and quality. The results of the survey are posted on a website open to the patients and families, the public and employers and other purchasers of health care. It is the most complete picture available of a hospital’s quality and safety.

The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage founded a decade ago to work for improvements in health care safety, quality and affordability.

The survey, which launched in 2001, focuses on four critical areas of patient safety: the use of computer physician order entry (CPOE) to prevent medication errors; standards for doing high-risk procedures such as heart surgery; protocols and policies to reduce medical errors and other safe practices recommended by the National Quality Forum; and adequate nurse and physician staffing. In addition, hospitals are measured on their progress in preventing infections and other hospital-acquired conditions and adopting policies on the handling of serious medical errors, among other things.

For children’s hospitals to make the list, they must receive a quality score of 95 or greater out of a possible 100. Cincinnati Children’s was one of 65 selected from a field of nearly 1200.

More information is available at www.leapfroggroup.org

About Cincinnati Children’s

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center ranks third in the nation among all Honor Roll hospitals in U.S. News and World Report’s 2011 Best Children’s Hospitals ranking. It is ranked #1 for gastroenterology and in the top 10 for all pediatric specialties – a distinction shared by only two other pediatric hospitals in the United States. Cincinnati Children’s is one of the top two recipients of pediatric research grants from the National Institutes of Health. It is internationally recognized for improving child health and transforming delivery of care through fully integrated, globally recognized research, education and innovation. Additional information can be found at www.cincinnatichildrens.org