LAMC CEO Tracie Stratton

By CAROL A. CLARK
Los Alamos Daily Post
caclark@ladailypost.com

• • • • • • “Never in history have we seen across-the-board improvement in patient safety until this last decade.” –Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder

The Leapfrog Group has released its fall 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade results. This release marks the 10th anniversary of the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, which assigns a letter grade to nearly 3,000 U.S. general hospitals based on how well they protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. 

Los Alamos Medical Center received second to the highest grade.

“We are pleased and excited to share that we have reached a significant milestone in our quality journey,” LAMC CEO Tracie Stratton said. “There has been a lot of focus and hard work put into improving patient care at Los Alamos Medical Center. The letter grade recognition from Leapfrog shows that we continue to be focused in the right areas to improve care. We will continue to strive to provide the best quality care to patients and improve their over all experience at LAMC.”

“Never in history have we seen across-the-board improvement in patient safety until this last decade,” said Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder, pointing to new research in JAMA suggesting significant improvements from 2010-2019. “The improvement in safety coincides with the dawn of unprecedented transparency in health care, including—prominently—the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade. Finally, transparency is galvanizing long awaited change. We are proud to be part of that.”

Measures that have shown significant improvement over the decade include two never events, incidents of falls and trauma and incidents of objects unintentionally left in a body after surgery, both which decreased by around 25 percent. There also was encouraging pre-pandemic progress on healthcare-associated infections for MRSA, CLABSI and C.Diff. These improvements saved an estimated 16,000 lives.

The 2022 Leapfrog Annual Meeting held Tuesday in Washington, D.C. focused on the critical need to accelerate patient safety improvement in America’s health care system, and brought together the nation’s leading experts on patient safety to discuss the urgency of patient safety.

The annual meeting events included:

•  A candid and frank conversation led by Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder and a panel of key leaders about the current state of patient safety: progress, setbacks, controversies, and where we go now;
• A live case study on how Florida used the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade for real change. Candid feedback from all perspectives: providers, patients, and employers; and
• Remarks from former U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, head of Health Transformation Alliance: employer outrage about health care quality and patient safety.