Article
100 HCA Healthcare hospitals earn Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award
TAGS:
Share:
This year, March 9-15, 2025, marks the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s annual recognition of Patient Safety Awareness Week. The weeklong celebration inspires action, advances important discussions and brings an opportunity to recognize the incredible contributions of HCA Healthcare colleagues and care providers working every day to improve patient safety in healthcare.
Today, we are proud to announce that 100 HCA Healthcare hospitals have been recognized as 2025 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipients by Healthgrades for providing exceptional, patient-centered care. This annual recognition is given to the top 10% of hospitals for their commitment to delivering safe, high-quality care.
“Patient safety will always be at the forefront of our priorities. I am proud of all of our hospitals and their staff, who continue to strive for clinical excellence, going above and beyond to provide high-quality, compassionate care to the patients who come through our doors.”
Dr. Michael Cuffe, executive vice president and chief clinical officer of HCA Healthcare
Recognition on this list is based solely on patient outcomes. To determine the top-performing hospitals for patient safety, Healthgrades evaluated risk-adjusted complication and mortality rates for approximately 4,500 hospitals nationwide. The annual study found that patients treated in hospitals that received the 2025 Patient Safety Excellence Award have a significantly lower chance of experiencing certain complications than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
Earlier this year, 49 HCA Healthcare hospitals were named on the 2025 Healthgrades America’s 250 Best Hospitals list for being within the top 5% of hospitals in the country for clinical excellence. Also based exclusively on patient outcomes, the annual designation is reserved for hospitals who demonstrate superior performance in providing care for conditions and procedures across multiple specialty lines and areas.
“There is nothing more important than providing a safe experience for the people who entrust us with their care, and for us, patient safety is everyone’s responsibility. As we recognize Patient Safety Awareness Week, we thank our nearly 316,000 colleagues for working hard to provide safe patient care across one of the nation’s leading health systems.”
Karla Miller, PharmD, chief patient safety officer at HCA Healthcare
Across HCA Healthcare, dedicated quality teams strive to engineer patient safety into day-to-day operations across the health system. These teams are responsible for overseeing event reporting, serious event analysis, safe tables, and technologies such as barcode medication administration, among other programs. Safety initiatives are measured partly through a Culture of Safety survey, which is designed to help drive safety agendas and ensure the voices of colleagues are valued and leveraged to deliver safe, quality care.
HCA Healthcare’s Patient Safety Organization (PSO), established more than a decade ago, is dedicated to improving patient safety and the quality of healthcare delivery by partnering with HCA Healthcare facilities to build systems, refine processes and foster a culture of safety. Intentionally focusing on protecting conversations around patient safety, the PSO holds an annual, enterprise-wide “Safe Table” campaign to encourage all colleagues to share concerns and ideas related to the delivery of safe, quality care.
The organization has a long history of prioritizing and working to continually improve patient safety and has worked with prominent public and private institutions on industry research, including:
- The INSPIRE trials, two large multi-state studies conducted at 59 HCA Healthcare hospitals that identified a better way to target appropriate antibiotics for patients hospitalized with pneumonia or urinary tract infection, enabling better antibiotic stewardship in hospitals.
- The CLUSTER trial, a large multi-state study conducted at 82 HCA Healthcare hospitals that found an automated outbreak detection tool reduced the size of outbreaks by 64% in the trial period preceding the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The Swap Out trial, which found that a nasal antibiotic ointment used daily for intensive care unit (ICU) patients in only one-third of U.S. hospitals at the time, is highly effective at preventing Staphylococcus aureus infections in critically ill patients, outperforming an antiseptic solution.
- The ABATE Infection Trial, which found that an infection control technique achieved a 31% reduction in bloodstream infections and nearly a 40% reduction in antibiotic-resistant bacteria among non-ICU patients with central line catheters and lumbar drains.
- The REDUCE MRSA study, which found that using antimicrobial soap and ointment to decolonize all ICU patients reduced bloodstream infections by 44% and MRSA by 37%.
HCA Healthcare has also helped develop evidence-based perinatal protocols through a longstanding partnership with March of Dimes, including prohibiting elective delivery prior to 39 weeks to help babies have a healthy start to life. Additionally, HCA Healthcare developed the Sepsis Prediction and Optimization of Therapy (SPOT) tool, a system to help clinicians more quickly identify patients with sepsis.
You may also like...
About HCA Healthcare
HCA Healthcare, one of the nation's leading providers of healthcare services, is comprised of 183 hospitals and more than 2,300 sites of care, in 20 states and the United Kingdom. Our more than 283,000 colleagues are connected by a single purpose — to give patients healthier tomorrows.
As an enterprise, we recognize the significant responsibility we have as a leading healthcare provider within each of the communities we serve, as well as the opportunity we have to improve the lives of the patients for whom we are entrusted to care. Through the compassion, knowledge and skill of our caregivers, and our ability to leverage our scale and innovative capabilities, HCA Healthcare is in a unique position to play a leading role in the transformation of care.
Recent articles