Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota awarded elite distinction as a 2012 Leapfrog Top Hospital

ST. PAUL, Minn., Dec. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Paul campus of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota has once again been named to The Leapfrog Group's annual list of Top Hospitals. The announcement came at Leapfrog's Annual Meeting, focusing on transparency as the key to improved hospital safety. This is the fourth year in a row that Children's has been recognized, and the sixth time since 2006. Children's was one of only 12 pediatric hospitals in the country to be recognized by Leapfrog and the only pediatric hospital in the Upper Midwest.

"Children's is extremely pleased to be recognized as a Leapfrog Top Hospital," said Alan L. Goldbloom, MD, president and CEO of Children's of Minnesota. "As health care continues to evolve, patients and families expect more from their providers in terms of quality and efficiency of care. This Leapfrog award showcases that Children's is meeting that challenge and living up to the highest standards of care."

"The Leapfrog Top Hospital distinction is by far the most competitive award a hospital can receive. Leapfrog holds hospitals to the highest standards on behalf of our purchaser members and their employees. By achieving the Top Hospital accolade, Children's of Minnesota has demonstrated exemplary performance across all areas of quality and patient safety that are analyzed on the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. This hospital stands out as one consistently providing safe, high quality care, and I would be comfortable sending my family to Children's for care," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group.

As part of its effort to constantly improve care, Children's adopted the Lean system of continuous improvement in 2006. Since then, the hospital system has realized millions in savings, all while cutting medication waste by 40 percent, switching to a "trigger system" that reduced medical supply replenishment time – and the time nurses need to track supplies – and greatly improved the turnaround time of its labs. Children's Lean program was recognized in 2011 by the Minnesota Alliance for Patient Safety.

Additionally, while patient volumes in its emergency departments have increased, triage times have declined and patient satisfaction is up. By streamlining documentation, nurses are spending less time on paper work and more time at the bedside.

Children's has also implemented a Daily Engagement System that aligns employees around teamwork and goals and allows caregivers to operate more cohesively around each patient.

Children's of Minnesota was selected as a Top Hospital out of nearly 1,200 hospitals participating in The Leapfrog Group's annual survey, which measures hospitals' performance on patient safety and quality, focusing on three critical areas of hospital care: how patients fare, resource use, and management structures in place to prevent errors. The results of the survey are posted on The Leapfrog website (www.leapfroggroup.org/cp) and are open to the public.

Methodology

The Leapfrog Hospital Recognition Program uses standards from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey to calculate an overall quality score for each children's hospital. The quality score, which is a numerical value from 0 to 100, includes Leapfrog's standards for preventing medication errors (CPOE), ICU Physician Staffing, Safe Practices, Never Events and in some cases preventing hospital-acquired conditions such as infections. Hospitals with high quality scores have demonstrated strict adherence to Leapfrog's safety and quality standards.

About The Leapfrog Group

The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) is a national organization using the collective leverage of large purchasers of health care to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward the highest performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000 with support from the Business Roundtable and national funders, and is now independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.

About Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota:

Serving as Minnesota's children's hospital since 1924, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota is one of the largest pediatric health care organizations in the United States, with 347 staffed beds at its two hospitals in St. Paul and Minneapolis. An independent, not-for-profit health care system, Children's of Minnesota provides care through more than 12,000 inpatient visits and more than 200,000 emergency room and other outpatient clinic visits every year. Children's is the only Minnesota hospital system to provide comprehensive care exclusively to children. Please visit childrensMN.org.

SOURCE Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota

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