Allegiance Receives Patient Safety Excellence Award
May 14, 2009
Jackson, Mich. — Allegiance Health was one of only a dozen Michigan health systems to receive the 2009 Patient Safety Excellence Award from HealthGrades, a leading independent healthcare rating organization.
This award places Allegiance Health among the top five percent of hospitals nationwide, based on twelve patient safety indicators. Developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify the best-performing hospitals, these patient safety indicators include:
- Avoidance of severe infection following surgery
- Ability to diagnose and treat in time
- Absence of hip fracture after surgery
According to a HealthGrades study, patients at top-performing hospitals are, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors compared to the poorest performing hospitals. HealthGrades indicates that if all U.S. hospitals had performed at the same level as Patient Safety Excellence Award hospitals, the healthcare system could have saved $2 billion and potentially prevented 22,771 deaths in just three years among Medicare cases alone.
According to Rick May, MD, senior physician consultant at HealthGrades and co-author of the study, "Patient safety incidents are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The sad fact is many, if not most, of these errors are preventable. Patients shouldn’t die or experience unnecessary harm as a result of medical errors in hospitals."
Dr. May concluded by stating, "Patients need to know that they have a substantially lower risk of experiencing a medical error and therefore a lower risk of death or complications when they are admitted to one of these exceptional top-performing hospitals."
