St. Francis Medical Center, Trenton, was honored with an “A” grade in the Fall 2013 update to the Hospital Safety Score, which rates how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections.

The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety and is administered by The Leapfrog Group (Leapfrog), an independent industry watchdog.The first and only hospital safety rating to be analyzed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Patient Safety, the score is designed to give the public information they can use to protect themselves and their families.

Juliana Pribila, regulatory compliance manager in St. Francis Medical Center, stated: “We are proud of our accomplishments and this demonstrates our commitment to safety across the entire continuum of care.” “As patients begin to take a more active role in selecting where to receive health care, it has never been more important to focus on hospital safety and transparency. The ‘A’ hospitals, including St. Francis Medical Center, are helping us to raise the standards of health care nationwide,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “We offer our congratulations and hope the hospital will continue to strive for an ever-increasing level of excellence in patient safety.”

Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” or “F” score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm.