Overlake Excels in Patient Safety in 2014

Bellevue, Wash. – Designed to rate how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections, the latest Hospital Safety Score honored Overlake Medical Center with an “A”—its top grade in patient safety. Overlake is one of 16 hospitals in Washington state to receive the Hospital Safety Score’s top grade.

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 (Leapfrog), an independent industry watchdog. The first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, the Score is free to the public and designed to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.

“Making Overlake Medical Center the safest place for our patients is our highest concern. Consistently achieving Leapfrog’s “A” ranking and receiving Healthgrades’ Patient Safety Excellence Award six years in a row are testaments to our consistent focus on top quality and high value care for the Eastside,” said Overlake Medical Center President and CEO J. Michael Marsh. “We are honored by this recognition and I congratulate the staff and physicians here for their diligence in keeping patients safe.”

“Safety should come first for our families when we pick a hospital, because errors and infections are common and deadly,” said Leah Binder, president & CEO of The Leapfrog Group, which produces the Hospital Safety Score. “No hospital is perfect, but we congratulate the Board, clinicians, administration, and staff of Overlake Medical Center for achieving an “A” and showing us that you made the well-being of you patients your top priority.”  

Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the 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 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in spring 2014, with about 32-percent receiving an “A” grade. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, and its website offers a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades.

To see how Overlake Medical Center’s score compares locally and nationally, and to access safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at hospitalsafetyscore.org. Consumers can also go to hospitalsafetyscore.org for a free download of the Hospital Safety Score app.