The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) has been named one of the nation's best hospitals for patient safety and quality of care. It is the fourth year in a row that the Leapfrog Group has honored UMMC with the designation. Only 45 hospitals nationwide have earned this important and prestigious recognition for 2009.
UMMC is the only hospital in Maryland to be on the 2009 Top Hospitals list and is one of only three hospitals nationwide to have met Leapfrog's criteria each year since 2006.
The Leapfrog survey is the only national, public comparison of hospitals on key issues including mortality rates for certain common procedures, infection rates, safety practices, and measures of efficiency. The Leapfrog Group was founded by the Business Roundtable to initiate breakthrough improvements � or "leaps" � in health care safety, quality and affordability.
"Our inclusion on the Leapfrog Group's list of top hospitals four years in a row demonstrates that our entire staff�including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists and support staff �is focused on providing the best patient care," says Jeffrey A. Rivest, president and chief executive officer of the UMMC.
"The Leapfrog survey is a comprehensive, objective and up-to-date assessment of hospital performance in terms of quality and safety. It gives health care consumers an important resource when they are choosing a hospital for care," says Rivest.
The Leapfrog survey uses such criteria as patient care outcomes, use of best practices and patient safety initiatives. The criteria also include the number of specific high-risk procedures that are performed. Each year, Leapfrog adds new performance measures and expands the criteria for hospitals to meet its stringent standards.
One of Leapfrog's key criteria is whether a hospital uses computerized physician order entry, which means that medications, lab tests and imaging studies are ordered by physicians electronically, to reduce errors. UMMC completed full implementation of computerized order entry, known as CPOE, two years ago. As an added measure for 2009, Leapfrog looked not only at whether a hospital implemented CPOE, but also how effectively it used the system to prevent medication errors. The medical center met Leapfrog's rigorous standards on the CPOE evaluation tool.
Leapfrog also reviews hospital performance in a variety of common and high-risk procedures, as well as at the volume of high-risk procedures. A high number of procedures indicates more experience and usually represents better outcomes.
The medical center performed 133 aortic valve replacements in the past year, while the Leapfrog standard was 120. There were 778 percutaneous coronary interventions (such as balloon angioplasty) at the medical center, while the Leapfrog standard was 400. In addition, the medical center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit cared for 123 very low birth weight babies, significantly exceeding the Leapfrog standard of 50.
Also important to the Leapfrog Group is whether hospital intensive care units are staffed with physicians who have specialized training in intensive or critical care. Such specialists are known as intensivists. "All ten of our Intensive Care Units, including the surgical, medical, neurological, cardiac surgery, multi-trauma and pediatric ICUs, are staffed by doctors who are specially trained in intensive and critical care," says Dr. Gottlieb.
UMMC also scored well on many of the safe practices selected by Leapfrog, such as nurse staffing, quality and leadership, hand hygiene, medication reconciliation, communication of critical information to patients and having leadership structure and systems in place to provide patient safety.
The hospital was among 1,206 hospitals that submitted data and documentation for the 2009 Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey.
Source: The University of Maryland Medical Center
Writer: Walaika Haskins