UC San Diego Health System Excels in Patient Safety

Article Content

Designed to rate how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections, the latest Hospital Safety Score honored UC San Diego Health System with an “A” – its top grade in patient safety. The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety and is administered by The Leapfrog Group (Leapfrog), an independent industry watchdog.

“UC San Diego Health System is deeply proud to receive two ‘A’ grades from The Leapfrog Group for its hospitals in Hillcrest and La Jolla,” said Paul Viviano, CEO, UC San Diego Health System. “These national safety scores reflect the deep and continuous commitment of UC San Diego Health System employees to provide specialized lifesaving care in a safe and patient-centered environment.”

The Hospital Safety Score is the first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, the score is free to the public and designed to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.

“Safety should come first for our families when we pick a hospital, because errors and infections are common and deadly,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, which produces the Hospital Safety Score. “No hospital is perfect, but we congratulate the Board, clinicians, administration, and staff of UC San Diego Health System for achieving an “A” and showing us that you made the well-being of you patients your top priority.”

Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single A, B, C, D, or F score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in spring 2014, with about 32 percent receiving an A grade. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, and its website offers a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades.

To see how the UC San Diego Health System score compares locally and nationally, and to access safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at hospitalsafetyscore.org. Consumers can also go to hospitalsafetyscore.org for a free download of the Hospital Safety Score app.