Of the eight hospitals in Pennsylvania to earn the prestigious Top Hospital designation from the independent hospital safety watchdog Leapfrog Group, half are St. Luke’s facilities:

• St. Luke’s Easton Campus, Top Teaching Hospital

• St. Luke’s Monroe Campus, Top Rural Hospital

• St. Luke’s Hospital – Allentown Campus, Top Teaching Hospital

• St. Luke’s University Hospital – Bethlehem Campus, Top Teaching Hospital

Additionally, St. Luke’s Warren Campus is one of just four hospitals in New Jersey to be recognized as a Top Teaching Hospital, and St. Luke’s Buxmont has been named a Top Ambulatory Surgical Center, the only one in Pennsylvania to receive the distinction.

“At St. Luke’s, quality and safety are baked into our culture,” said St. Luke’s Chief Quality Officer Donna Sabol. “When it comes to quality and safety, it’s not hyperbole to assert that no other Network can touch St. Luke’s.”

Leapfrog’s Top Hospital award recognizes the highest performing hospitals in the United States in the Teaching, General, Rural and Children’s categories. It is based on objective data across many areas of hospital care, including infection rates and the hospital’s capacity to prevent medication errors.

More than 2,100 U.S. hospitals were considered for the award. Nationwide, only 134 hospitals were selected, including eight Top Children’s, 36 Top General, 15 Top Rural and 75 Top Teaching.

Last November Leapfrog released its 2024 Fall Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, awarding high marks to every St. Luke’s University Health Network hospital eligible for evaluation. Nationwide, only a few other similar-sized health systems, such as the Mayo Clinic, earned as many ‘A’ grades as St. Luke’s.

For the Leapfrog Top Hospital award, data is gathered and publicly reported through the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. The survey compares hospitals’ performance on national standards of patient safety, quality, efficiency and management structures that prevent errors, providing the most comprehensive picture of how patients fare at individual institutions. The data collected also enables hospitals to benchmark their progress toward Leapfrog’s standards and measure the care they deliver.

“It is truly a joy to recognize the hospitals and ASCs across the nation that have gone above and beyond in their pursuit of excellence. Our Top Hospital and Top ASC Awards are among the most prestigious in the U.S. and deserve credit for role model performance,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “St. Luke’s has demonstrated that patient safety is their top priority, and we’re truly pleased to recognize them as a Top Hospital this year. Congratulations to hospital staff at all levels who made this national recognition possible.”

The full list of institutions honored as 2024 Top Hospitals is available at www.leapfroggroup.org/tophospitals.

 

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites. With annual net revenue of $4 billion, the Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school campus. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 52 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 500 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke’s, a member of the Children’s Hospital Association, established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency, and patient satisfaction. St. Luke’s is a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. The Network’s flagship University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from Fortune/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in 2021 when it was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. In 2021, St. Luke’s was also identified as one of the 15 Top Health Systems nationally. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.

 

Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy