Overlake Medical Center has received the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award for the sixth year in a row.

“Ensuring patient safety is always a top priority at Overlake,” said Craig Hendrickson, Overlake president and CEO. “By focusing on safety we are leading the way in providing exceptional quality and compassionate care for our community. We are proud to have earned this award six years in a row and it solidifies Overlake’s position as one of the leading hospitals in the country.”

The Patient Safety Excellence Award places Overlake within the top 10 percent of all hospitals for its performance in safeguarding patients from serious, potentially preventable complications during their hospital stays. On average, patients treated in Patient Safety Excellence Award hospitals were also:

— 81 percent less likely to experience hip fracture following surgery compared to hospitals ranked in the bottom 5 percent in the nation;

— 80 percent less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital compared to hospitals ranked in the bottom 5 percent in the nation;

— 70 percent less likely to experience a catheter-related bloodstream Infection acquired in the hospital compared to hospitals ranked in the bottom 5 percent in the nation.

Overlake Medical Center has also been named one of the nation’s Top Performers on Key Quality Measures by the nationally-recognized Joint Commission and was honored with an “A” Hospital Safety Score by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits.

“Healthgrades’ report highlights the variation in hospital quality, both locally and across the nation, in order to show consumers that spending time on understanding hospital performance can be a matter of life and death,” said Evan Marks, EVP Informatics and Strategy, Healthgrades. “Consumers can be assured that a hospital that has been recognized with a Healthgrades 2013 Patient Safety Excellence Award has demonstrated an established commitment to patient safety.”

Overlake has also received national patient safety recognition for the outstanding work it has done to eliminate ventilator-associated pneumonia and central line bloodstream infections in Critical Care.

In addition, Overlake was one of the first hospitals in the country to form Rapid Response Teams to respond at the first sign of a patient’s condition worsening.

During the 2013 Healthgrades study period (2009-2011), Patient Safety Excellence Award hospitals also showed better than expected performance in providing safety for patients in the Medicare population, as measured by objective outcomes (risk-adjusted patient safety indicator rates) across 13 of the 14 most common patient safety indicators, as defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).