Staff report

LUMBERTON — Southeastern Regional Medical Center was recently honored with an “A” for safe care by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national non-profit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits.

“We are pleased to receive this outstanding score from The Leapfrog Group,” said SRMC President/CEO Joann Anderson. “This score recognizes the efforts our staff take daily to ensure our patients receive safe care.”

The Hospital Safety ScoreSM was calculated under the guidance of The Leapfrog Group’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel using publicly available data on patient injuries, medical and medication errors, and infections. U.S. hospitals were assigned an A, B, C, D or F.

“It’s The Leapfrog Group’s goal to give patients the information they need and deserve before even entering a hospital,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “We congratulate the hospitals that earned an A and we look forward to the day when all hospitals in the U.S. will earn the highest scores for putting patient safety first.”

To see Southeastern Regional Medical Center’s scores as they compare nationally and locally, visit www.hospitalsafetyscore.org, the Hospital Safety ScoreSM website, which also provides information on how the public can protect themselves and loved ones during a hospital stay.

Calculated under the guidance of The Leapfrog Group’s nine-member Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 26 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from infections, injuries, and medical and medication errors. The panel includes: John Birkmeyer of the University of Michigan; Ashish Jha of Harvard University; Lucian Leape of Harvard University; Arnold Millstein of Stanford University; Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins University; Patrick Romano of University of California, Davis); Sara Singer of Harvard University; Tim Vogus of Vanderbilt University; and Robert Wachtero f University of California, San Francisco.

The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) is a national 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.