Newswise — SEATTLE – (Dec. 4, 2018) – Virginia Mason and Chairman and CEO Gary S. Kaplan, MD, will both be honored today at The Leapfrog Group’s annual Top Hospitals Awards Dinner and Ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Virginia Mason will receive the Leapfrog 2018 Top Hospital Award, designating it as a national leader in quality and safety for the 13th consecutive year. Virginia Mason is the only medical center in the United States to receive the award every year since the recognition program began in 2006.
Dr. Kaplan will receive the inaugural Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Health Care CEO, which recognizes a health care executive who has demonstrated courageous and ethical leadership in addressing the twin issues of affordability and quality. The award will be presented by Neel Shah, MD, founder and executive director of Costs of Care, a nonprofit organization based in Boston that strives to help health systems provide better care at lower cost.
“While health care delivery is a team sport, executives play a critical role in setting organizational culture and providing clarity of purpose,” said Dr. Shah. “Dr. Kaplan sets a standard of leadership in the United States that recognizes all the dimensions of care that matter to patients – not only safety, but affordability and dignity as well.”
The award is named for Steven Schroeder, MD, former president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who is a Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care at the University of California San Francisco. The award is part of Costs of Care’s annual Value Challenge – launched in partnership with the ABIM Foundation – which aims to inspire and share innovations among collaborative teams of clinicians, educators, quality improvement specialists, and health system administrators from around the country.
Virginia Mason is recognized as a 2018 Top Hospital in the Teaching Hospital category for acute-care hospitals that have fewer than 500 licensed beds and an established medical residency program.
“The Leapfrog Top Hospital award is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant honors American hospitals can receive,” said Dr. Kaplan. “I am very proud of our team’s commitment to excellence and our organization’s achievements in advancing quality and safety.”
To determine its 118 Top Hospital award winners, Leapfrog considered performance across numerous areas of hospital care, including infection rates, medication safety and inpatient care management. The selection of Top Hospitals was based on surveys from nearly 1,900 hospitals across the nation.
“Being acknowledged as a Top Hospital is an incredible feat achieved by less than six percent of eligible hospitals nationwide,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO, The Leapfrog Group. “With this honor, Virginia Mason has established its commitment to safer and higher quality care. Providing this level of care requires motivation and drive from every team member. I congratulate the board, staff and clinicians, whose efforts made this honor possible.”
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