Home|Blog | Griffin Hospital Earns National Quality and Safety Distinctions

DERBY, CT (November 8, 2013) – Griffin Hospital continues to be among the state leaders in quality and patient safety, recently earning top recognition from two national healthcare organizations.

Griffin Hospital was named a 2012 Top Performer on Key Quality Measures® by The Joint Commission, the leading accreditor of health care organizations in America, and was honored with an “A” grade in the Fall 2013 release of the Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Score, which rates how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections.

“We are extremely proud to receive this national recognition for our commitment to quality and patient safety,” said Griffin Hospital President and CEO Patrick Charmel. “Our hospital-wide culture of safety is a cornerstone of Griffin’s mission to provide care that is patient-centered, safe, equitable, timely, effective, and efficient.”

Giving patients the best medicine

Griffin Hospital was recognized as a 2012 Top Performer on Key Quality Measures by The Joint Commission for exemplary performance in using evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to improve care for certain conditions. The clinical processes focus on care for heart attack, pneumonia, surgery, children’s asthma, stroke and venous thromboembolism, as well as inpatient psychiatric services. New this year is a category for immunization for pneumonia and influenza.

Griffin Hospital is one of 1,099 hospitals in the U.S. earning the distinction of Top Performer on Key Quality Measures. Griffin was recognized for its achievement with heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care. The ratings are based on an aggregation of accountability measure data reported to The Joint Commission during the 2012 calendar year. Griffin is the only Connecticut hospital to twice be named a Top Performer by the Joint Commission, and was the only hospital in the state to receive the recognition in 2011.

“Griffin Hospital and all the Top Performer hospitals have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to quality improvement and they should be proud of their achievement,” said Mark R. Chassin, M.D., FACP, M.P.P., M.P.H., president and chief executive officer, The Joint Commission. “We have much to celebrate this year. Nearly half of our accredited hospitals have attained or nearly attained the Top Performer distinction. This truly shows that we are approaching a tipping point in hospital quality performance that will directly contribute to better health outcomes for patients.”

In addition to being included in the November 1 release of The Joint Commission’s “Improving America’s Hospitals” annual report, Griffin Hospital will be recognized on The Joint Commission’s Quality Check website (qualitycheck.org). The Top Performer program will be featured in the December issues of The Joint Commission Perspectives and The Source.

Giving patients peace of mind

The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety and is administered by The Leapfrog Group, an independent industry watchdog. The first and only hospital safety rating to be analyzed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Patient Safety, the Score is designed to give the public information they can use to protect themselves and their families.

“As patients begin to take a more active role in selecting where to receive healthcare, it has never been more important to focus on hospital safety and transparency. The ‘A’ hospitals, including Griffin Hospital, are helping us to raise the standards of health care nationwide,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “We offer our congratulations and hope the hospital will continue to strive for an ever-increasing level of excellence in patient safety.”

To see Griffin Hospital’s scores as they compare nationally and locally, and to find safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at hospitalsafetyscore.org.

About the Joint Commission and its Top Performer Methodology

An independent, not-for-profit organization, The Joint Commission accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. Joint Commission accreditation and certification is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to meeting certain performance standards.

In order to earn Joint Commission Top Performer on Key Quality Measures status, Griffin and each of the hospitals that were named to the list must: 1) achieve cumulative performance of 95 percent or above across all reported accountability measures; 2) achieve performance of 95 percent or above on each and every reported accountability measure where there are at least 30 denominator cases; and 3) have at least one core measure set that has a composite rate of 95 percent or above, and (within that measure set) all applicable individual accountability measures have a performance rate of 95 percent or above. A 95 percent score means a hospital provided an evidence-based practice 95 times out of 100 opportunities to provide the practice. Each accountability measure represents an evidence-based practice – for example, giving aspirin at arrival for heart attack patients, giving antibiotics one hour before surgery, and providing a home management plan of care for children with asthma.  More information is available on The Joint Commission website.

About the Leapfrog Group and its Hospital Safety Score Methodology

The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization using the collective leverage of large purchasers of health care to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward the highest performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000 with support from the Business Roundtable and national funders, and is now independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.

Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the organization’s Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” or “F” score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 general U.S. hospitals were assigned scores this Fall. A full analysis of the data and methodology used is available on the Hospital Safety Score website.