Brownsville, TX – Valley Regional Medical Center today announced it has been recognized by Healthgrades as a 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ recipient. This distinction places Valley Regional Medical Center among the top 5% of all short-term acute care hospitals as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading marketplace connecting patients and providers.
Valley Regional Medical Center colleagues protect the safety of their patients with daily safety huddles and by consistently having real-time systems in place that use data and analytics to identify and manage risks, such as SPOT. Valley Regional Medical Center introduced SPOT (Sepsis Prediction and Optimization of Therapy), an algorithm-driven, real-time system to quickly identify patients with sepsis. This alert system is life-saving for patients and coupled with aggressive sepsis treatment helps save lives.
“The team at Valley Regional Medical Center is committed to doing everything possible to deliver safe and quality care to the patients we serve and improve the health in our community,” said David Irizarry, newly appointed chief executive officer. “I am impressed with and proud of the exceptional doctors, nurses, and ancillary colleagues that continuously raise the bar and keep our patients’ safety at the center of all their work.”
During the study period (2018 through 2020), 170,231 potentially preventable patient safety events occurred among Medicare patients in U.S. hospitals.* Healthgrades found that just four patient safety indicators accounted for 74% of all patient safety events: hip fracture due to an in-hospital fall, collapsed lung resulting from a procedure/surgery, pressure or bed sores acquired in-hospital, and catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in-hospital. Healthgrades also found that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Healthgrades 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ were, on average:
- 55.8% less likely to experience an in-hospital fall resulting in hip fracture, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals*
- 52.6% less likely to experience a collapsed lung resulting from a procedure or surgery in or around the chest, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals*
- 66.2% less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals*
- 65.8% less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at nonrecipient hospitals*
When it comes to choosing healthcare, quality saves lives, which is why Healthgrades is committed to delivering the most scientifically accurate and comprehensive information about doctors and hospitals — with data insights not available anywhere else. To that end, it's important for consumers to know that if all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to the Healthgrades Patient Safety Award Recipients, on average, 100,189 patient safety events could have been avoided.*
“Through our 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Awards, we seek to recognize hospitals that excel in providing top-quality care for their patients while preventing serious injuries during hospital stays,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer and head of Data Science, Healthgrades. “We are proud to name Valley Regional Medical Center as a 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient and look forward to their continued efforts to make patient safety a priority.”
Consumers can visit healthgrades.com for more information on how Healthgrades measures hospital quality and access the complete methodology here.
*Statistics are calculated from Healthgrades Patient Safety Ratings and Excellence Award™ methodology which is based primarily on AHRQ technical specifications (Version 2021.0.1) for MedPAR data years 2018 through 2020 and represent 3-year estimates for Medicare patients only.