Here are five takeaways:
1. The scores are released twice each year, and top patient safety experts calculate the scores.
2. Additionally, the scores are peer-reviewed and fully transparent to the public. The Hospital Safety Score has 28 measures, which are divided into two domains: process/structural measures and outcome measures.
3. Across the board, hospitals compared worse on six safety measures compared to the Spring 2015 scores. Hospitals performed worse on critical measures including foreign objects left in patients after surgery as well as falls and trauma, postoperative respiratory failure and prevention of ventilator associated complications.
4. The Hospital Safety Scores use national performance measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the CDC and CMS to produce a single composite score.
5. The Hospital Safety Scores also used secondary data from the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement to provide hospitals with as much credit as possible toward their safety scores.
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