Mills-Peninsula Is Only ‘Triple Crown’ Winner in California

Sutter Mills-Peninsula Medical Center was recognized this week as the only “triple crown” award recipient in California and one of five hospitals in the nation to receive Healthgrades’ honors in three award categories: Patient Safety, Patient Experience and America’s 50 Best Hospitals. Healthgrades, an online resource that gives consumers information about physicians and hospitals, announced the honors during National Patient Safety Awareness week.

“Our teams stay laser focused on improving healthcare and patient safety across Sutter Health every day,” said Sutter Health President and CEO Warner Thomas. “A huge congratulations and appreciation to Sutter Mills-Peninsula on receiving this distinction. This national recognition honors the resolve of all our physicians, clinicians, nurses and staff. Thank you for everything you do to keep our patients, communities and colleagues safe.”

Three additional Sutter hospital sites were awarded Healthgrades’ Patient Safety Excellence recognition for 2023:

• Sutter Alta Bates Summit Medical Center – Alta Bates Campus
• Sutter Eden Medical Center
• Sutter Novato Community Hospital

The Patient Safety Excellence Award honors hospitals that have the lowest occurrences of 14 preventable patient safety events. These hospitals are in the top 10% in the nation for patient safety. According to Healthgrades, if all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to the 2023 Patient Safety Award recipients, up to 95,880 patient safety events could have been avoided between 2019 and 2021.

“Our doctors and care teams are dedicated to providing safe, equitable, high-quality care for the patients and communities we serve,” said Dr. William Isenberg, Sutter Health chief medical officer. “These recognitions from Healthgrades acknowledge our teams’ commitment to put our patients’ safety first in everything we do.”

The Healthgrades’ safety award winners were announced this week along with a list of the Outstanding Patient Experience honorees. In addition to Mills-Peninsula, Sutter Surgical Hospital North Valley received Healthgrades’ Outstanding Patient Experience honors for 2023. Both North Valley and Mills-Peninsula count among the top 15% of hospitals in the nation for patient experience, according to Healthgrades, which evaluated 3,138 hospitals that submitted at least 75 patient experience surveys to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), covering admissions from January-December 2021.

Safety Through Innovation

Innovation is one way that Sutter helps create safer experiences, efficient workflows and enhance patient care. The not-for-profit system recently implemented more than 8,000 smart intravenous (IV) infusion pumps in more than 33 locations. Dr. Isenberg says the new generation smart pumps have built-in software and network capabilities, allowing for increased accuracy and safety around IV medication administration for patients and caregivers. Once customized, the sophisticated pumps can also send real-time data to the patient’s electronic medical record.

“Smart infusion pumps play a role in safe IV medication delivery to patients by helping to provide the appropriate medication dose, frequency and duration,” said Dr. Isenberg.

As part of its safety effort, the Northern California health system also consolidated 26 hospital-specific drug libraries into one single IV drug library, providing safer medication delivery to patients.

“A standard drug library along with the new smart pumps not only improves efficiency, but helps ensure the right medication is given to the right patient at the right time,” added Dr. Isenberg. “As technology advances, we must continue to learn, update and improve the tools and ways we deliver care as part of our commitment to safety. The smart pump rollout is just one of many initiatives taking place across Sutter to help provide safe, meaningful care to our patients and our communities.”

Click here to learn more about Sutter’s honors from Healthgrades and the methodoogy.

View the following video to see how smart pumps help patients like Cody Walter stay mobile while he receives intravenous therapy.