University Times

Children’s Hospital is one of 33 hospitals — seven of them children’s hospitals — selected as a 2008 Top Hospital by a national organization that evaluates patient safety at more than 1,220 hospitals. Children’s recognition was based on the results of the 2008 Leapfrog Hospital Survey, which is the nation’s primary hospital patient safety evaluation tool.

The top hospitals:

• Met Leapfrog standards for implementing computer physician order entry (CPOE) systems that help prevent medication errors, and have also tested their CPOE systems with Leapfrog’s CPOE evaluation tool.

• Met standards for at least one of the complex, high-risk procedures (such as heart surgery) done in that particular hospital.

• Met the intensive care unit staffing standard.

• Met or demonstrated “substantial progress” on 13 additional nationally recognized safety practices, such as preventing pneumonia or bloodstream infections.

A study in the June issue of the Journal of Quality and Patient Safety found that hospitals that perform well on the survey have lower mortality and better quality of care than those that either didn’t perform as well on the survey or chose not to complete it.