Top-ranked for quality and safety

UC Davis Medical Center named 2010 Leapfrog Top Hospital

exterior photo of UC Davis Medical Center
UC Davis Medical Center ranks among The Leapfrog Group’s top hospitals for 2010, a distinction that recognizes hospital performance in crucial areas of patient safety and quality.

Posted Dec. 15, 2010

UC Davis Medical Center ranks among The Leapfrog Group’s top hospitals for 2010, a distinction that recognizes hospital performance in crucial areas of patient safety and quality, including mortality rates for certain common procedures, infection rates, safety practices and measures of efficiency.

UC Davis is one of 65 top hospitals and one of 53 urban hospitals, recognized at the Leapfrog Group’s annual meeting in Washington, D. C., on Nov. 30. 

The selection — based on the Leapfrog’s national survey of 1,200 hospitals that volunteer to publicly report their performance — includes university and other teaching hospitals, children’s hospitals and community hospitals in rural, suburban and urban settings.

The results, publicly posted online in early December, offer patients, families, employers and other purchasers of health care the most complete picture available of a hospital’s quality and safety.

“Earning the top hospital designation for a second year is a testament to the commitment our faculty and staff have to delivering the highest quality and safest care for our patients,” said Ann Madden Rice, chief executive officer of UC Davis Medical Center.

Ann Madden Rice © UC Regents"Earning the top hospital designation for a second year is a testament to the commitment our faculty and staff have to delivering the highest quality and safest care for our patients."
— Ann Madden Rice

“Through our participation with the Leapfrog Group, the UC Center for Health Quality and Innovation, and other quality and safety initiatives, we are leading the way in developing evidence-based practices that improve patient care.”

The Leapfrog Group is a nonprofit coalition of some of the nation’s largest employers and health-care purchasers — such as Intel, FedEx and Boeing — who are working for improvements in health-care safety, quality and affordability for their employees and dependents.

Initially organized by the Business Roundtable, it is now an independent advocacy group working with a broad range of partners, including hospitals and insurers. Efforts are under way to include consumer advocacy groups.

To receive the designation as a Top Hospital, UC Davis met the following performance measures:

  • using computer physician order entry systems to prevent medication errors
  • complying with standards for complex, high-risk procedures such as heart surgery
  • following protocols and policies to reduce medical errors and other safe practices recommended by the National Quality Forum
  • maintaining adequate nurse and physician staffing

In addition, hospitals were measured on their progress in preventing infections and other hospital-acquired conditions, and adopting policies on the handling of serious medical errors, among other things.

More about quality

To read more about UC Davis Health System's commitment to quality and safety, click here.

UC Davis Medical Center is a comprehensive academic medical center where clinical practice, teaching and research converge to advance human health. Centers of excellence include the National Cancer Institute-designated UC Davis Cancer Center; the region's only level 1 pediatric and adult trauma centers; the UC Davis MIND Institute, devoted to finding treatments and cures for neurodevelopmental disorders; and the UC Davis Children's Hospital.

The medical center serves a 33-county, 65,000-square-mile area that stretches north to the Oregon border and east to Nevada. It further extends its reach through the award-winning telemedicine program, which gives remote, medically underserved communities throughout California unprecedented access to specialty and subspecialty care.