adventhealth deland and daytona beach top hospitals
BEACON FILE PHOTO ONE OF THE NATION’S TOP HOSPITALS — Independent health care watchdog agency The Leapfrog Group recently named AdventHealth DeLand (shown) and AdventHealth Daytona Beach as Top Hospitals for their rigorous standards for health care safety and quality met by less than 5 percent of the nation’s hospitals evaluated by Leapfrog.

An independent national health care watchdog agency has awarded AdventHealth an Emerald Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Health Care System, the hospital system announced recently.

“The Emerald Award [. . .] reflects AdventHealth’s remarkable achievements and leadership in patient safety, quality and transparency,” Leapfrog Group’s President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “This capstone award is a testament to AdventHealth’s leadership and entire team, and success in perpetuating a culture of patient safety and excellence throughout the system from the top down.”

The Leapfrog Group uses publicly available data to analyze hospitals’ performance related to preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other potential harms to patients in their care. It then assigns a Safety Grade to each facility.

AdventHealth operates hospitals in Florida and eight other states. Two are in West Volusia — one each in DeLand and Orange City — and there’s a free-standing emergency department in Deltona. AdventHealth also operates three other hospitals in Volusia and Flagler counties.

All the local hospitals received an “A” grade from Leapfrog in 2021, putting them among more than two dozen AdventHealth facilities to achieve that rating, according to the release.

Fourteen of the organization’s hospitals across the country — including AdventHealth DeLand and AdventHealth Daytona Beach — also received the Top Hospital award, a designation with rigorous standards for health care safety and quality met by less than 5 percent of the nation’s hospitals evaluated by Leapfrog, the news release states.

“It takes leadership and stellar teamwork on the front lines to achieve exceptional health care outcomes that earn accolades like Leapfrog’s Emerald Award,” William Scharf, M.D., executive clinical director of safety and quality for AdventHealth, said in the release. “Our local and system leadership recognize Leapfrog’s measurements for safety as a key performance indicator and set the direction, expectations and incentives and remove barriers to ensure our teams are equipped to provide exceptional care.”

PHOTO COURTESY ADVENTHEALTH
THE EMERALD AWARD — The Leapfrog Group, a national watchdog agency for health care, recently presented this award to AdventHealth.

As a national independent watchdog organization, Washington, D.C.-based Leapfrog’s advocacy for transparency in health care includes collecting, analyzing and disseminating data to inform value-based purchasing and improved decision-making.

Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grades is the only hospital ratings program based exclusively on hospital prevention of medical errors and harm to patients. The grading system is peer-reviewed, fully transparent and publicly available for consumers to review, according to the release.

With AdventHealth hospitals making up a tenth of the entire country’s Leapfrog Top Hospitals recognized last year, the Emerald Award reiterates the success of frontline team members’ diligence to keep patients safe every day — even amid the shifts and challenges of a global pandemic, the release said.

“This is an accomplishment that is shared by all our team members and specifically those in our clinical roles,” AdventHealth President and CEO Terry Shaw said in the release. “It’s their commitment to safety that has resulted in so many of our hospitals earning the ‘A’ grade Leapfrog safety score over the years and put us in this unique position of attaining these results so consistently year after year.”

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