HUMBLE, TEXAS (June 05, 2016)

Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital earned an “A” grade in the recently released spring update of independent hospital watchdog The Leapfrog Group’s elite national ratings program, recognizing hospitals’ strong commitment to patient safety. The Leapfrog Group shows key shifts among many hospitals on the A, B, C, D and F grades rating them on errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. Memorial Hermann Northeast was one of only 798 hospitals to receive an A, ranking among the safest hospitals in the United States.

“We are extremely proud of this recognition,” said Heath Rushing, Sr. Vice President and CEO of Memorial Hermann Northeast. “Our staff works hard daily to ensure that our patients and their families receive high quality and safe care when they are treated at our hospital. They trust us with their care and we want to honor that by being committed every day to eliminating all potential sources of harm at Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital.”

The Hospital Safety Score is the gold standard rating for patient safety, compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading patient safety experts and administered by The Leapfrog Group, a national, independent nonprofit. The first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, the Hospital Safety 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.

Developed 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 – to represent a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm.

The Hospital Safety Score uses national performance measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement. Taken together, those performance measures produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

“Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital’s grade is a powerful reminder of its commitment to putting patient safety above all else, and we are pleased to recognize the persistent efforts of its clinicians and staff to protect your patients,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, which administers the Hospital Safety Score. “Our families, neighbors, colleagues and friends deserve a hospital that will pull out all the stops to keep them safe, and we urge Memorial Hermann Northeast and all other A hospitals to preserve and renew their commitment to safety year after year.”