Belleville, NJ – Clara Maass Medical Center announced today that it is a recipient of the Healthgrades 2019 Patient Safety Excellence AwardTM. This distinction places Clara Maass Medical Center, a facility of RWJBarnabas Health among the top 5 percent of all acute care hospitals reporting patient safety data as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading online resource for information about physicians and hospitals.
“Earning the Excellence Award this year reflects our continuous focus on the patient safety and quality, especially given our journey to become a High Reliability Organization that reduces overall patient harm to the greatest degree possible.” said Mary Ellen Clyne, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Clara Maass Medical Center.
“We’ve been successful with uniting our employees, medical staff, volunteers – everyone around patient safety, and this award recognizes the effort and dedication of our entire team” Clyne said.
“This recognition confirms that we have made the right investment in clinical quality and patient care, and that we are on the right track to achieve excellence in everything that we do for our patients” said Naveen Ballem, MD, Chief Clinical Effectiveness Officer at Clara Maass Medical Center.
“We are proud to recognize the recipients of the 2019 Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award, which shines a spotlight on the hospitals that are preventing the occurrence of serious, potentially avoidable complications, for patients during their hospital stay,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Healthgrades. “We applaud these hospitals and their commitment to providing the best possible care for every patient.”
During the study period (2015 to 2017), Healthgrades 2019 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient hospitals demonstrated excellent performance in safety provided for patients in the Medicare population, as measured by objective outcomes (risk-adjusted patient safety indicator rates) for 14 patient safety indicators defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Healthgrades found that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Patient Safety Excellence Award were, as compared to patients at non-recipients hospitals, on average*:
· 55.9% less likely to experience an accidental cut, puncture, perforation or hemorrhage during medical care.
· 50.9% less likely to experience a collapsed lung due to a procedure or surgery in or around the chest.
· 64.4% less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital.
· 57% less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired at the hospital.
In addition, if all hospitals in the country performed at the level of award recipients for each of the 14 Patient Safety Indicators, 127,667 patient safety events could have been avoided.*