News Releases
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Ranks No. 1 in Safety
For Release: November 08, 2004
Stanford, Calif -- Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital recently received a perfect score on a national survey of 27 patient-safety practices. The score places Packard ahead of the 26 other children’s hospitals that participated in the survey.“This score tells us that we’re on the right track toward effectively improving and ensuring patient safety,” said Paul Sharek, MD, MPH, the hospital’s chief clinical patient safety officer and medical director of quality management.
Many hospitals, including Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, instituted new patient-safety initiatives after the national Institute of Medicine reported in 1999 that 98,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors made in hospitals.
In response to that report, an association of Fortune 500 companies and other large employers calling themselves the Leapfrog Group started surveying hospitals to determine which facilities had instituted certain safety measures. The Leapfrog Group represents more than 34 million Americans and more than $62 billion in health-care expenditures.
The Leapfrog survey has grown to cover more safety procedures and more hospitals each year. The 2004 sample included 858 hospitals. The group now provides information in an online format that allows health-care consumers to compare hospitals the way readers of Consumer Reports compare cars.
The 2004 report added a “quality index” that includes 27 safety criteria derived from a report on safe practices in health care published in 2003 by the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit organization. It was this index on which Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital ranked first among the 27 children’s hospitals that submitted responses to the survey.
The Leapfrog survey marks one of three national safety measures on which Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital performed extremely well in 2004. In August the hospital also got a perfect score on the triennial Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations survey, which has a heavy focus on patient safety. Additionally, in a study that compared adverse drug events at multiple children’s hospitals nationwide, LPCH had one of the lowest incidence rates – about 80% better than the average.
Combined, these results demonstrate that Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has successfully integrated presently known patient safety practices. Still, there’s always room for improvement, Sharek said. “The theory is that all errors are ultimately preventable. So if you’re not at zero, you’re not there yet.”
About Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is a 264-bed hospital devoted to the care of children and expectant mothers. Providing pediatric and obstetric medical and surgical services and associated with Stanford School of Medicine, LPCH offers patients locally, regionally and nationally the full range of health-care programs and services – from preventive and routine care to the diagnosis and treatment of serious illness and injury. To learn more about Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, please visit our Web site at http://www.lpch.org.
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