SALINAS, CA (April 25, 2016) — Natividad Medical Center in Salinas (NMC) is pleased to announce that the hospital has received the top rating from The Leapfrog Group, one of the country’s leading organizations in measuring and publicly reporting hospital performance.
NMC received an “A” rating in The Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Score, a twice-annual survey of more than 2,500 hospitals across the nation. NMC was one of 798 hospitals to receive an “A”, ranking among the safest hospitals in the United States. The Hospital Safety Score was created and is administered by The Leapfrog Group, an independent, national nonprofit organization committed to driving quality, safety, and transparency in the U.S. health system.

“We are extremely pleased to receive the top rating from The Leapfrog Group,” said NMC CEO Dr. Gary Gray. “We believe in transparency with this data and sharing with the community the continuous improvements we are making in providing high quality patient care with high patient satisfaction.

NMC is achieving major milestones in many areas of health care receiving recognition for high quality services. Recent examples include the designation as a Level II Trauma Center, selection as a high performing hospital in Maternity Care in California by the California HealthCare Foundation, and designation as a Blue Distinction Center for Maternity Care and Bariatric Surgery excellence by Anthem Blue Cross.“We thank our staff for their dedicated service in providing high quality, compassionate health care,” said Gray.

About the Score:
The Hospital Safety Score grades general acute care hospitals on how safe they are for patients. The score includes data that patient safety experts use to compare hospitals. Publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and secondary data sources are weighted and then combined to produce a single, consumer-friendly composite score that is published as an A, B, C, D or F letter grade. The Hospital Safety Score includes 30 publicly reported measures, all currently in use by national measurement and reporting programs. Leapfrog works under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel to select measures and develop a scoring methodology. The panel is made up of patient safety experts from across the country.

About The Leapfrog Group:
Washington D.C.-based The Leapfrog Group was founded more than a decade ago by some of the nation’s leading employers and private health care experts. The Leapfrog Group strives to make major leaps forward in the safety, quality and affordability of health care in the U.S. by promoting transparency through their data collection and public reporting initiatives. More information is available at http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.

About Natividad Medical Center (NMC)
Owned and operated by Monterey County, NMC is a 172-bed, acute-care hospital providing health care services to county residents for more than 130 years. Based in Salinas, California, NMC offers inpatient, outpatient, emergency, diagnostic and specialty medical care. NMC provides more than 34,000 patient days of care each year and has more than 52,000 emergency department visits per year. NMC is a Level II Trauma Center providing the immediate availability of specialized personnel, equipment and services to treat the most severe and critical injuries. NMC’s Trauma Center is a vital community service locally that saves lives and eliminates the need to fly critically injured patients to a distant trauma center. NMC is ranked No. 1 in newborn deliveries in Monterey County and is the only teaching hospital on the Central Coast through its affiliation with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). With a medical staff of more than 300 physicians, NMC’s mission is to continually monitor and improve the health of the people, including the vulnerable, in Monterey County through coordinated, affordable high-quality health care. For more information, please call 831-755-4111 or visit www.natividad.com.