Bellin Hospital today announced that it has been recognized by Healthgrades as a 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ and Outstanding Patient Experience Award™ recipient. These distinctions place Bellin Hospital among the top 2 percent of all short-term acute care hospitals as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading marketplace connecting patients and providers.
Bellin Hospital is the only hospital in Wisconsin to be recognized Among the Top 10 percent in the nation for both Patient Safety and Patient Experience in 2023.
Bellin has implemented a Patient Safety Operating System, which includes a number of programs and initiatives aimed at enhancing patient safety and experience, such as daily tiered huddles, disclosure and response processes, shared lessons through the Forward Pass safety newsletter, safety stops and containment meetings. The health system has also cultivated a culture of learning and improvement through its Care for the Caregiver peer support group and leadership walk rounds to engage individuals closest to the work to improve processes and prevent adverse patient safety outcomes.
“We are honored to receive these recognitions as they are evidence of our dedication and commitment to patient safety and experience,” said Bellin Health President Chris Woleske. “Thank you to our staff and teams for providing the safest and highest quality care to our patients and their families.”
As it relates to the safety of patients, during the 2019-2021 study period, 164,592 potentially preventable patient safety events occurred among Medicare patients in U.S. hospitals.* Healthgrades found that just four patient safety indicators accounted for 74 percent of all patient safety events: hip fracture due to an in-hospital fall, collapsed lung resulting from a procedure/surgery, pressure or bed sores acquired in the hospital, and catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in-hospital. To that end, it's important for consumers to know that if all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to the 2023 Patient Safety Award recipients, on average, 95,880 patient safety events could have been avoided.*
“Through our 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Awards, we seek to recognize hospitals that excel in providing top-quality care for their patients while preventing serious injuries during hospital stays,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer and head of Data Science, Healthgrades. “We are proud to name Bellin Hospital as a 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient and look forward to their continued efforts to make patient safety a top priority.”
As it relates to the patient experience, Healthgrades evaluated 3,138 hospitals that submitted at least 100 patient experience surveys to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), covering admissions from January 2021 through December 2021. Of those hospitals evaluated, 419 hospitals outperformed their peers—based on their patients’ responses—to achieve this award. Healthgrades evaluates performance by applying a scoring methodology to 10 patient experience measures, using data collected from HCAHPS survey of the hospital’s own patients. Survey questions focus on patients’ perspectives of their care in the hospital, from cleanliness and noise levels in patient rooms to medication explanations and hospital staff responsiveness to patients’ needs. The measures also include whether a patient would recommend the hospital to friends or family and their overall rating of the hospital.
“We applaud all recipients of the Healthgrades 2023 Outstanding Patient Experience Award for putting patient experience front and center within their organizations,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Data Science at Healthgrades. “We commend these hospitals for their ongoing commitment to prioritizing an exceptional patient experience, while ensuring the health and safety of their patients.”
Consumers can visit healthgrades.com for more information on how Healthgrades measures hospital quality and access the complete methodology here.
*Statistics are calculated from Healthgrades Patient Safety Ratings and Excellence Award methodology which is based primarily on AHRQ technical specifications (Version 2022.0.1) for MedPAR data years 2019 through 2021 and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only.
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