Four Minnesota Hospitals Rate High For Patient Safety a...( Consumers Urged To Use Online Qua...),Health

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MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leapfrog Group and the Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG) today released this year's results from a comprehensive hospital quality and safety survey of more than 1,200 hospitals. Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester and Childrens' Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis and St. Paul were named Leapfrog Top Hospitals for 2007, recognizing top performers on the Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey from across the nation. This year, 33 hospitals and eight children's hospitals were honored for the steps they are taking to reduce medication errors, improve the quality of intensive care and the enhance their effectiveness in performing high-risk medical procedures.

The Leapfrog Group began reporting data in 2002 from larger hospitals in six initial regions, which included Minnesota. Survey results in 2007 reveal significant new findings about the state of health care quality and safety in the nation's hospitals by asking hospitals about their awareness and action on the 30 Safe Practices for Better Healthcare endorsed by the National Quality Forum.

New in this year's survey results is information about bariatric and aortic valve surgery, consideration of surgeon experience in rating hospital performance for these and other high-risk procedures, information about hospital participation in other public reporting programs, and hospitals' positions on Leapfrog's policies regarding never events -- mistakes in hospitals that should never happen.

Information about how well hospitals across the nation performed on the Leapfrog Survey, as well as the complete Top Hospitals list and its methodology are available at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/news/leapfrog_news/Top_Hospi
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