April 30, 2020

Nearly two years ago, TriHealth embarked on a system-wide journey to Lead the Way to Zero Harm in order to ensure we provide the safest, highest quality care possible – which is central to our mission and sacred work to improve the health of all those we serve. As a result of our collective efforts and steady progress on this journey, TriHealth and our hospitals have achieved significant and sustained reductions in harm events, including hospital-acquired infections. And today, TriHealth is now consistently ranked nationally as a top-performing health system with top-performing hospitals by numerous independent quality assessment and analytics firms, including Healthgrades, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), IBM Watson Health, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and the Leapfrog Group, among others.

On April 30, TriHealth's latest safety grades from Leapfrog’s bi-annual survey will be released. Over the past few years, TriHealth and its four eligible hospitals have consistently received “straight As” – and our safety performance has continued to improve since the last survey, which took place six months ago. However, due to the inclusion of optional, supplementary information, which we provided for the first time on the Spring 2020 survey, our grades fell at each of our eligible hospitals (Bethesda North, Good Samaritan, Bethesda Butler, and McCullough-Hyde).

It is important to know that all of us at TriHealth who have worked so hard to improve safety in recent years understand that the lower grades do not reflect an actual decline in the safety and quality of care in our facilities or any change in our many safety practices. TriHealth carefully tracks mortality and preventable harm data each month, and our data shows we are continuing to improve on all fronts. Had the optional information not been included in our most recent submission, our track record of “straight As” from Leapfrog would still stand today. We remain committed to participating in the Leapfrog patient safety program, but are reconsidering providing these optional submissions in the future, given this unexpected and disappointing outcome.

TriHealth's quality and safety performance remains outstanding and is continually improving due to the hard work and dedication of our team members and physicians, and we are grateful for all you do to help us Lead the Way to Zero Harm.