Franciscan Health earns ‘B’ Rating from patient safety watchdog

Franciscan Health Olympia Fields and Chicago Heights announced today that it has earned a ‘B’ grade from The Leapfrog Group in recognition of its improved patient safety performance at both facilities.

The Leapfrog Group is a Washington, DC-based organization that is dedicated to improving health care quality and safety. It assigns an A, B, C, D or F grade to hospitals across the nation based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms among patients in their care.

Franciscan Health’s Spring 2018 ‘B’ grade is one full grade level higher than last year’s grade.

“Patient safety is always a top priority for Franciscan Health. This improvement and achievement is the result of the exceptional team effort of our hospital and medical staff over the years,” said Daniel Netluch, MD, vice president of medical affairs. “We’ve improved our Leapfrog score by two letter grades over the past two years demonstrating our dedication to excellence.”

Developed under the guidance of an expert panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to approximately 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. It is peer reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public.

“This is the only national rating of how well hospitals protect patients from preventable harm and death, such as medical errors, infections, and injuries,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group.

Allan M. Spooner, Franciscan Health President and CEO, said, “Our dedicated professionals work diligently to ensure that patients receive safe, quality care at Franciscan Health. I am proud that Leapfrog has recognized our tremendous effort toward continuous improvement at our hospitals. These results inform our community that they can trust Franciscan Health’s physicians, nurses, technologists and clinicians to deliver the very best patient care.”