Five Hackensack Meridian Health Hospitals Receive an ‘A’ for Patient Safety from The Leapfrog Group

Hackensack Meridian Health is pleased to announce that five of its hospitals were awarded an ‘A’ from The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2019 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Guide. The designation recognizes hospitals for efforts to protect patients from harm and provide safer health care.

The following Hackensack Meridian Health hospitals received ‘A’ grades: Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune; Ocean Medical Center, Brick; Pascack Valley Medical Center, Westwood; Raritan Bay Medical Center, Perth Amboy; and Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank.

“Our shared commitment to providing the highest quality health care and patient safety is essential to our mission to transform health care and serve as a leader of positive change,” said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, CEO, Hackensack Meridian Health. “I want to congratulate our team members for achieving ‘A’ grades for the exceptional care they provide every day. Our patients, their families, and the communities we serve are the beneficiaries of this level of dedication.”

The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization, is committed to improving health care quality and safety for consumers and purchasers. The Safety Grade assigns an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade to hospitals nationwide based on performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections, and other harm to patients in their care.

“Working in collaborative groups, we implement a system-wide infrastructure for measuring, reporting, and ensuring quality through a single quality scorecard that reports hospital-level data and examines real-time performance metrics,” said Carol Barsky, M.D., MBA, executive vice president and chief quality officer, Hackensack Meridian Health. “We remain committed to improving the quality of patient care, patient safety and patient experience.”

Developed under the guidance of a national Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.

About The Leapfrog Group

Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps forward in the quality and safety of American health care. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey collects and transparently reports hospital performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information they need to make informed decisions. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Leapfrog’s other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections.