Lehigh Valley Designed to rate how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections, the latest Hospital Safety Score honored Lehigh Valley Hospital and Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg with an A its top grade in patient safety.

The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of the nation's leading experts on patient safety and is administered by The Leapfrog Group, an independent industry watchdog. The first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, the score is free to the public and designed to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.Both hospitals also received A grades in last fall's Hospital Safety Score."Results like this are only achieved when a team works together to make patient safety a priority," said Ronald Swinfard, Lehigh Valley Health Network's president and CEO. "All of our physicians, nurses and staff devote time to our patients by working together and trusting each other as a team to deliver the highest quality care in the safest environment. These A scores for hospital safety are evidence of the passion, dedication, expertise and compassion demonstrated by all of my colleagues in caring for our community.""Safety should come first for our families when we pick a hospital, because errors and infections are common and deadly," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. "No hospital is perfect, but we congratulate the Board, clinicians, administration, and staff of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg for achieving an A and showing us that you made the well-being of your patients your top priority."Calculated under the guidance of Leapfrog's Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single A, B, C, D or F score representing a hospital's overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in spring 2014, with about 32-percent receiving an A grade. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, and its website offers a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades.To see how scores for Lehigh Valley Hospital and Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg compare locally and nationally and to access safety tips for patients and their loved ones, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at

www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. Consumers can also get a free download of the Hospital Safety Score app.Lehigh Valley Health Network includes four hospital facilities, two in Allentown, one in Bethlehem and one in Hazleton; 11 health centers caring for communities in five counties; numerous primary and specialty care physician practices throughout the region; pharmacy, imaging, home health services and lab services; and preferred provider services through Valley Preferred.