New Jersey Nurse - April 2021

April 2021 New Jersey Nurse & Institute for Nursing Newsletter Page 5
Saint Peter’s University Hospital Nationally Recognized with
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade of ‘A’ for Fall 2020
Teresa Artz, MSN, RN, CCRN-K, director,
Magnet Program and Nursing Quality-
Education
New Brunswick,
NJ, February 1,
2021 – Saint Peter’s
University Hospital,
a member of Saint
Peter’s Healthcare
System, received an
‘A’ for the Fall 2020
Leapfrog Hospital
Safety Grade, which
demonstrates the
hospital’s commitment
to high quality patient
care. Developed
under the guidance
of a national panel
of experts, the
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27
measures of publicly available hospital safety data
to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acutecare
hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety
Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully
transparent.
All interprofessional healthcare staff at Saint
Peter’s has contributed to the achievement of a
Leapfrog ‘A’ grade, inclusive of all clinical nurses
at the bedside and in leadership roles. Many of the
measures that Leapfrog utilizes to grade hospitals
are nursing sensitive. Nurses at Saint Peter’s are
committed to always providing the highest level of
quality care at the bedside driven by evidence-based
practice resulting in successful patient outcomes
and a culture of safety.
“Safety is always a number one priority at Saint
Peter’s but receiving this recognition amidst a
pandemic is even more meaningful,” said Leslie
D. Hirsch, FACHE, president and CEO of Saint
Peter’s Healthcare System. “Receiving Leapfrog’s
highest safety grade reinforces patient confidence
in the ability to receive quality medical care without
compromise. At Saint Peter’s, we are proud of our
ongoing ability to safely deliver the highest quality,
evidence-based clinical practices along with the
compassionate care that is the hallmark of our
Catholic mission.”
One of the first areas of the Leapfrog scorecard
reviews the structure within the hospital, including
the nursing workforce. The objective of this
measure is to ensure that nursing staff services and
nursing leadership at all levels are competent and
adequate to provide safe care.
Other measures that nursing care contributes
to are within the process and outcomes domains.
The nursing sensitive
indicators include
barcode medication
administration,
hand hygiene,
catheter associated
urinary tract
infections, central
line associated blood
stream infections,
healthcare acquired
pressure injuries, and
falls with trauma.
Additional measures
that evidence-based
nursing care impacts
are the prevention of healthcare acquired infections,
such as surgical site infections, MRSA and C. diff.
Hospitals are also graded upon their level
of patient satisfaction relative to the patient’s
experience of care. HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer
Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems)
questions are graded based on questions that are
reflective of nursing care within the hospital. The
HCAHPS domains, relative to nursing, included in
Leapfrog are Communication with Nursing, Staff
Responsiveness, Communication about Medications
and Discharge Information.
According to Linda Carroll, MSN, RN-BC,
vice president of Patient Care Services and chief
nursing officer at Saint Peter’s, “Our clinical nurses
are leaders in the patient experience, quality, and
patient safety. Saint Peter’s nurses have been
recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing
Center for the sixth consecutive time as a Magnet
organization based on the same metrics scored
upon in the Leapfrog methodology.”