The Valley Health System’s Henderson Hospital has been named a 2025 Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award™ recipient, placing it in the nation’s top 10 % for preventing avoidable complications.
Healthgrades mines three years of Medicare data across 14 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality indicators from post‑op sepsis to catheter‑related infections. Hospitals in the award cohort demonstrate double‑digit relative‑risk reductions patients treated at recipient facilities are 48 % less likely to suffer a collapsed lung after a chest procedure and 67 % less likely to acquire a catheter‑related bloodstream infection, according to the award methodology.
For Henderson Hospital already an ACC‑accredited Primary Chest Pain Center the accolade validates a five‑year journey that included adopting a zero harm pledge, unit‑based hand‑hygiene audits and real‑time clinical dashboards that alert teams to early signs of pressure‑injury risk.
CEO Sam Kaufman credits the facility’s Serious Event Review Committee with cutting central‑line infections to zero for two consecutive fiscal quarters. “You can’t meet door‑to‑balloon targets if the patient develops a preventable bloodstream infection on day two,” Kaufman noted. “Safety is the floor on which performance stands.”
The award also strengthens the metro‑wide network of accredited chest‑pain centers. In the past six months Sunrise Hospital added next‑gen ablation, UMC finalized a hybrid ER‑cath‑lab suite, and St Rose‑Siena campus introduced AI‑driven ECG triage. Henderson’s safety metrics ensure that once patients are stabilized, they remain on a complication‑free path through recovery.
Operationally, Henderson will now share its Hospital‑Acquired Condition alert scripts with partner facilities. Each script ties an early‑warning score (based on vital trends and lab flags) to a prompt for physician reassessment within 30 minutes, pre‑empting escalation to an adverse event.
Local EMS agencies applauded the recognition: “A hospital that excels at safety is one we trust to hand our patients over to,” said Clark County Chief Paramedic Angela Rios. “Knowing that Henderson’s performance has third‑party validation gives our crews confidence during high‑stakes chest‑pain transports.”
As payers move toward safety‑linked reimbursement modifiers, the award may also improve the hospital’s negotiating leverage—dollars that can be reinvested in additional cath‑lab capacity and community outreach similar to Sunrise’s CPR campaign. The ultimate winner, administrators stress, is the patient whose chest pain journey—from 911 call to discharge follow‑up—now occurs in a demonstrably safer environment.