University Times

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh is one of seven pediatric hospitals in the nation named to the Leapfrog Group’s 2010 class of Top Hospitals for patient safety and quality. This is the third year in a row Children’s Hospital has been named a Leapfrog Top Hospital.

The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage working for improvements in health care safety, quality and affordability.

Children’s selection was based on the results of the Leapfrog Group’s voluntary national survey. The survey, which started in 2001, focuses on four critical areas of patient safety: the use of computer physician order entry to prevent medication errors; standards for doing high-risk procedures such as heart surgery; protocols and policies to reduce medical errors and other safe practices recommended by the National Quality Forum, and adequate nurse and physician staffing.

In addition, hospitals are measured on their progress in preventing infections and other hospital-acquired conditions and adopting policies on the handling of serious medical errors, among other things.

Children’s Hospital was among seven pediatric hospitals and 58 urban and rural adult hospitals selected as Top Hospitals out of nearly 1,200 who participated in the survey. The survey results are posted online at www.leapfroggroup.org.