Shawnee Mission Medical Center Awarded Highest Designation Grade Hospital Safety Leapfrog Group

For the 11th consecutive time, Shawnee Mission Medical Center (SMMC) has been awarded the elite designation of “A” for its commitment to keeping patients safe by The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization.

The Leapfrog Group released new Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades assigning letter grades of A, B, C, D and F to hospitals nationwide based on their performances in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms.

“Hospital safety is among our highest priorities at Shawnee Mission Health as we are committed to providing quality care to our patients,” said Lori K. Cue, administrative director of quality and safety. “We are proud to earn our 11th-consecutive grade ‘A’ from Leapfrog’s safety grade list, one of the highly-regarded quality measures in our industry. As we strive to focus on the whole health of our patients, this recognition is a testament to the guidelines we implement to provide safe and quality care.”

Developed under the guidance of an Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign A, B, C, D and F grades to approximately 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. It is peer reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. A new measure was added this year that assesses how well hospitals prevent and identify medication errors with a barcode system.

SMMC is one of only 42 “Straight A” hospitals in the United States to be awarded an ‘A’ every grading cycle since the launch of the Safety Grade in spring 2012.

Across all states, additional Hospital Safety Grade findings include:

• Of more than 2,600 hospitals graded, 32 percent earned an “A,” 24 percent earned a “B,” 37 percent a “C,” 6 percent a “D” and just under 1 percent an “F”
• In a ranking of states by total number of “A” grade hospitals, Kansas is ranked 24th and Missouri is ranked 34th.