Healthgrades on Tuesday announced the winners of this year's Patient Safety Excellence Award and Outstanding Patient Experience Award.

Just updated: Learn how Healthgrades—and other leading ratings programs—actually work

The Patient Safety Excellence Award

The Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award recognizes top-performing short-term acute care hospitals among those that report patient safety data. This year, Healthgrades recognized 460 hospitals with the award.

Learn in-the-moment patient safety concern scripting

For the award, Healthgrades assessed patient safety based on inpatient data from the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) file and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators Technical Specifications. Specifically, Healthgrades looked at 14 AHRQ patient-safety indicators. These indicators represent serious, potentially preventable complications. Examples of the indicators include the death rate among surgical inpatients with serious treatable complications and the pressure ulcer rate.

Every state had at least one hospital receiving the award except Alaska and Montana. No hospitals won the award in Washington, D.C.

Click here to view the full list of award recipients.

The Outstanding Patient Experience Award

The Healthgrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award recognizes hospitals that provide standout patient experience to the Medicare population. This year, Healthgrades recognized 434 hospitals with the award.

To determine award winners, Healthgrades assessed hospitals based on data from CMS' Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient survey. This year, Healthgrades assessed 3,449 hospitals that submitted at least 100 HCAHPS surveys to CMS. Survey questions address things like cleanliness and noise levels within patient rooms, as well as whether the patient would recommend seeking care at the hospital.

Healthgrades bases its assessments on nine patient experience measures that it compiles from 21 survey questions. It sorts hospitals into four categories, based on their attributes, such as size, location, and whether they're teaching hospitals.

The top 15% of hospitals in each cohort make up the Outstanding Patient Experience Award winners.

Most states had at least one hospital receive the award. The states without any hospitals winning the patient experience award include Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. No hospitals won the award in Washington, D.C.

Click here for the full list of award recipients (Vaidya, Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control, 5/14; Healthgrades release, 5/14; Healthgrades 2019 Patient Safety Excellence Award list, 5/14; Healthgrades 2019 Outstanding Patient Experience Award list, 5/14; Healthgrades 2019 Outstanding Patient Experience award methodology, 5/14; Healthgrades 2019 Patient Safety Excellence Award methodology, 5/14).

Just updated: Learn how Healthgrades—and other leading ratings programs—actually work

Download our one page sheets for summaries on the methodology and metric categories used in seven hospital quality rating programs:

• Healthgrades Patient Safety Ratings and Excellence Awards
• CMS HCAHPS Patient Experience Star Rating
• Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Grade
• US News and World Report Best Hospital Rankings

Get all the Cheat Sheets