Salem, Mass. – North Shore Medical Center (NSMC) announced today that, for the second year in a row, it has been named a recipient of the 2008 Distinguished Hospital Award for Patient Safety according to an independent national research study by HealthGrades, the nation's leading healthcare ratings company.

This distinction ranks NSMC among the top five percent nationally for patient safety outcomes. NSMC is one of only 115 teaching hospitals in the country to receive the 2008 Distinguished Hospital Award for Patient Safety, one of only three hospitals in Massachusetts to receive the award, and the only hospital on the North Shore to receive the award for two consecutive years.

"We are honored to be recognized as a Distinguished Hospital for Patient Safety for the second consecutive year," said Robert Norton, President and CEO, North Shore Medical Center. "We are committed to providing top-quality, patient-centered care, and this award reflects our dedication to excellence."

The HealthGrades study compares the rates of key patient safety events, such as post-operative infections and preventable deaths. A total of 1,658 U.S. hospitals (out of nearly 5,000 evaluated) were eligible to receive the award, based on HealthGrades' criteria that recipients must treat a wide range of medical conditions and demonstrate an acceptable level of clinical quality in terms of mortality and complication rates.

From the list of eligible recipients, hospitals that performed in the top 15% in terms of outcomes are recognized as recipients of the 2008 Distinguished Hospital Award for Patient Safety. This year, a total of 249 hospitals (115 teaching and 134 non-teaching) received the prestigious award. This translates into the top five percent nationally for patient safety outcomes, when all U.S. hospitals are considered.

The fifth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study found that many hospitals continue to fall short. According to the study, patient safety accidents had resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths from 2004 through 2006, and patient safety errors had cost Medicare an extra $8.8 billion in that period.

More information on the study's methodology is available at http://www.healthgrades.com/.