Lake Huron Medical Center, a member of Prime Healthcare, today announced that it has been recognized by Healthgrades as a 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ recipient. This distinction places Lake Huron Medical Center among the top 5% of all short-term acute care hospitals as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading marketplace connecting patients and providers.

Prime Healthcare has more patient safety excellence awards for seven years in a row than any other health system (2016-2022), according to Healthgrades.

“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 Lake Huron Medical Center as a 2022 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient and look forward to their continued efforts to make patient safety a priority.”

In addition to earning this recognition from Healthgrades in 2022, Lake Huron Medical Center has also been recognized as the only five-star facility by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in St. Clair County, and has received straight A’s from Leapfrog in patient safety since 2018.

“Providing high-quality, compassionate, comprehensive and cost-effective health care to the mind, body, and spirit of all those who walk through our doors is not just something we say; it’s what we do,” stated Jose Kottoor, Chief Executive Officer, Lake Huron Medical Center. “We credit these achievements to our commitment to clinical excellence by our staff and physicians. It’s their commitment, each and every day, to our patients that makes all the difference.”

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.*

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.