Vacaville's Kaiser Permanente Among Hospitals Honored as Leapfrog Top Hospitals

Ten Kaiser Permanente Northern California hospitals have been named 2011 Leapfrog Top Hospitals, an honor that rewards medical centers for outstanding success in such areas as using electronic health records to reduce medication and other errors, lowering infection rates, maintaining appropriate physician and nursing staffing, and other measures of safety and efficiency.

Eight Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Southern California also received the honor, which means that 18 of this year’s 65 Top Hospitals in the U.S. are Kaiser Permanente facilities in California. They were chosen from a field of nearly 1,200 hospitals around the country surveyed this year.

Over the past three years, 13 Kaiser Permanente facilities in Northern California have been named Top Leapfrog Hospitals

“Kaiser Permanente is consistently recognized by several independent third-party organizations for providing high-quality health care, and this latest honor from Leapfrog is further testament that our physicians, nurses and staff members are consistently delivering personalized, coordinated and technologically advanced care that is improving the health and well-being of our patients and the communities we serve,” said Gregory A. Adams, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Hospitals, Inc., in Northern California.

Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Top Hospitals in 2011 are:

• Antioch
• Oakland
• Richmond
• Roseville
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• South Sacramento
• South San Francisco
• Walnut Creek
• Vacaville

The Kaiser Permanente hospitals honored in Southern California are: South Bay (formerly Harbor City), Panorama City, Riverside, San Diego, Fontana, Los Angeles, West Los Angeles and Woodland Hills.

The 18 honored Kaiser Permanente hospitals were all in the “urban” category, and comprised more than a third of the 52 top urban hospitals listed nationally. The other categories surveyed were children’s hospitals (10 honored nationally) and rural hospitals (three nationally).

“The physicians, nurses and staff of Kaiser Permanente consistently deliver outstanding quality care and service that is personalized, technologically advanced and closely coordinated across all disciplines—primary care, specialty care, outpatient care and inpatient care,” said Robert Pearl, MD, executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group.  “Our excellent ratings from Leapfrog and other third-party organizations reflect the excellence and superiority of our integrated model for medical care, which enables our medical group, hospitals and health plan to work together on behalf of our patients to achieve the highest quality outcomes.” 

 “It is an honor to have our Vacaville hospital recognized for our continued efforts around quality,” said Max Villalobos, Kaiser Permanente’s senior vice president and hospital administrator for Napa Solano “We are dedicated to serving everyone in the community. With the recent opening of our Level III trauma center and as the largest health care provider in Solano County, we look forward to continuing to deliver personalized and high-quality care.”

The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage founded a decade ago to work for improvements in health care safety, quality and affordability.  Initially organized by the Business Roundtable, it is now an independent advocacy group working with a broad range of partners, including hospitals and insurers.  The annual survey is the only voluntary effort of its kind.

The 2011 list includes university and other teaching hospitals, children’s hospitals and community hospitals in rural, suburban and urban settings.  The selection is based on the results of the Leapfrog Group’s national survey that measures hospitals’ performance in crucial areas of patient safety and quality.  The questions Leapfrog asks on its survey are consistent with measures used by The Joint Commission, National Quality Forum and Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The results of the survey are posted on a website open to the patients and families, the public and employers and other purchasers of health care. It is the most complete picture available of a hospital’s quality and safety.  The website is www.leapfroggroup.org.

Info: Kaiser Permanente press release