Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH) - Cedar Crest, LVH - Hazleton, LVH - Muhlenberg and LVH - Pocono each was awarded an ‘A’ grade on the Hospital Safety Grade report from The Leapfrog Group for spring 2021.

The national ratings reflect how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries, infections and other harms. The safety score is designed to give the public information that is useful for choosing a hospital for care.

Matthew McCambridge, MD, LVHN Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer, said it’s especially gratifying for the hospitals to be recognized with ‘A’ grades by Leapfrog for safe care because fighting the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic required pivoting and addressing safety challenges that changed as the pandemic unfolded.

“COVID-19 pulled us together. Our care teams at LVHN hospitals, our work family, did everything in their power to take care of patients safely. That was our driving focus all year. It has been a challenging year,” said McCambridge.

Healthcare workers at each hospital and in the health network strategized to overcome challenges that included personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, adding 250 additional beds for people infected with COVID-19 and shipping mechanical ventilators among hospitals throughout the network, McCambridge said.

“We had to design processes to safely care for patients and care for ourselves, even beyond LVHN’s high safety standards.

“For instance, when patients had to be put on life-support during the first wave, we had to figure out a way to safely do that and keep ourselves safe at the same time,” McCambridge said.

“We had to double down and triple down on our cleanliness, cleaning and disinfecting rooms after every encounter,” said McCambridge.

Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said an ‘A’ safety grade is an elite designation that LVHN should be proud of.

“The past year has been extraordinarily difficult for hospitals, but people working at LVH - Cedar Crest, LVH - Hazleton, LVH - Muhlenberg and LVH - Pocono show us it is possible to keep a laser focus on patients and their safety, no matter what it takes,” said Binder.

Developed under the guidance of a national panel of experts, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 acute-care hospitals in the United States twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.

Information: www.hospitalsafetygrade.org