SEAFORD — TidalHealth Nanticoke, a 99-bed hospital in Seaford, is the recipient of the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award.

This distinction places TidalHealth Nanticoke among the top 5% of all acute care hospitals in the United States for patient safety, officials said.

“The importance of hospital quality is now at the forefront of consumer’s minds, especially as we continue to navigate COVID-19," Brad Bowman, chief medical officer of Healthgrades, said in a prepared statement. "We congratulate TidalHealth Nanticoke and the other recipients of the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award for their ongoing commitment to upholding the highest quality standards for their patients and communities."

This is the fifth year that TidalHealth Nanticoke has earned the distinction, and is the only Delaware hospital presented the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award, since 2017.

Healthgrades evaluates patient safety data of nearly 5,000 hospitals across the nation. Hospitals cannot opt in or out of that study.

From 2017 through 2019, there were 190,273 potentially preventable patient safety events among Medicare patients in U.S. hospitals. And, if all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to hospitals performing better than expected on each of 13 Patient Safety Indicators evaluated by Healthgrades, on average, 106,052 patient safety events could have been avoided.

Healthgrades found that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award were, on average:

• 50.3% less likely to experience a collapsed lung due to a procedure or surgery in or around the chest, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 60.3% less likely to experience an in-hospital fall resulting in hip fracture, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 66.5% less likely to experience pressure sores or bedsores acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 65.4% less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non- recipient hospitals.