Cooley Dickinson Hospital Earns ‘A’ Grade for Patient Safety

NORTHAMPTON — Cooley Dickinson Hospital was one of 798 hospitals — and among only 36 in Massachusetts — that ranked in the top 31{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of hospitals nationwide in patient safety, according to new Hospital Safety Score letter grades announced this week by the Leapfrog Group, a national patient-safety watchdog. Leapfrog assigns ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ ‘D,’ and ‘F’ grades to hospitals nationwide to provide the most complete picture of patient safety in the U.S. healthcare system.

“Achieving excellence for our patients takes a sustained effort,” said Joanne Marqusee, president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Health Care. “It is our goal is to make the highest-quality healthcare accessible to our patients. I am proud of Cooley Dickinson’s providers and staff who take steps every day to ensure patients receive safe care.”

Added Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, “avoidable deaths in hospitals should be the number-one concern of our healthcare leaders. Hospitals that earn an ‘A’ from Leapfrog are leaders in saving lives, and we commend them and urge their continued vigilance.

Leapfrog uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. The score is calculated by top patient-safety experts, peer-reviewed, fully transparent, and free to the public.