One Roswell Committed to Safety

At Roswell Park, your safety and comfort matter to us. We are committed to creating an environment that protects and supports every patient, visitor and staff member. Quality and safety encompass a broad range of initiatives, including fostering a culture of safety throughout our center, achieving optimal treatment outcomes, and quality performance.

Roswell Park’s culture of safety

In 2023, Roswell Park began a new initiative to become a High Reliability Organization, to ensure our high levels of safety and quality are reflected in every area of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. The primary goal? Achieve zero preventable harm.

All Roswell Park leaders and employees have undergone high reliability skills training to achieve this goal, in addition to implementing a daily organization-wide safety huddle, unified safety event reporting system, and rounding in all departments with executive leaders.

Roswell Park has also launched a Great Save program to recognize and celebrate employees who speak up for safety and prevent harm to patients or other employees. Since November 2023, 150 Great Saves have been awarded.

Measuring quality

Roswell Park participates in a specialized quality reporting program with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that allows consumers to compare the quality of care among other similar cancer centers. Among the areas Roswell Park is rated exemplary:

  • Fewer hospitalizations after chemotherapy. Compared to the national average, fewer Roswell Park outpatients receiving chemotherapy need to be admitted to the hospital within 30 days. Learn more about these data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
  • Patient feedback. On a scale of 1-10, a high percentage of our patients rated us 9 or 10. Explore additional patient survey results. 

Other initiatives contribute to our high level of quality and safety. Explore how these areas below impact you and your cancer care at Roswell Park.

We partner with several national organizations, pursuing accreditations, distinctions, awards and memberships, that help to ensure we meet the highest standards of patient safety and quality of care.

Accreditations

Awards

  • American Association of Critical Care Nurses' Beacon Award for Excellence – Silver for 2024, 2025
  • Women's Choice Award® for Cancer Care, Breast Care and Mammogram Imaging
  • Press Ganey Pinnacle of Excellence for Inpatient Patient Experience
  • American Medical Association "Joy in Medicine" Recognized Organization – 2024-2025 Bronze
  • Newsweek's America's Best Cancer Hospitals
  • Newsweek's World's Best Specialized Hospitals for Oncology 

Designations

Memberships

  • Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network Member (CITN)
  • National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)
  • National Marrow Donor Program
  • Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers (ADCC)
  • Comprehensive Cancer Center Consortium for Quality Improvement (C4QI) 

Roswell Park aims for continuous enhancement of safety for all our patients and visitors. This ongoing effort encompasses a holistic strategy — from implementing tools that help patients and their families become more informed and engaged in their care, to creating a protective environment to tracking important indicators that reflect patient safety like falls and infections. Highlights of our programs that enhance safety include:

Electronic medical records

Roswell Park embraced the healthcare industry’s conversion to using electronic medical records, a computer-based version of patient medical charts. An essential tool for assuring coordinated care, electronic medical records allow all a patient’s providers access to their records, medications and testing, improving communication and coordination of care.

MyRoswell Patient portal

The MyRoswell Patient Portal helps patients be more engaged in their care and communicate with their care team. Patients can check their appointments, receive personalized instructions, request prescription refills, and access a portion of their medical record through a section in the portal called Open Notes.

Reducing patient falls

Falls pose a significant risk to any patient and can result in injury, extended length of stay and long-term consequences. Our falls prevention program has resulted in a 67% reduction in falls with injury. The program involves an individual fall assessment of every patient and communicating their risk with the patient, their family/caregivers and the care team.

Patients with medium to high risk for falls are identified with yellow socks (inpatients) and yellow wrist bands (outpatients). Patients’ personalized prevention plan may include interventions such as providing assistive walking devices and use of bed and chair alarms. Unit-based champions support education and compliance.

Reducing pressure injuries and infection rates

Nursing Sensitive Indicators

Critical metrics such as patient falls, hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) are tracked and benchmarked nationally through the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI).

Like patient falls, hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) are important metrics Roswell Park continuously measures, tracks and aims for improvement. Overall rates of HAPIs, and CLABSIs have shown a significant decline from 2024 to 2025.

Improving medication safety

Roswell Park performs medication reconciliation for all patients at the time of admission, transfer and discharge to improve medication safety and reduce the incidence of adverse drug events.

Medication reconciliation is a systematic process of reviewing a patient’s current medications to ensure they’re accurate, necessary and safe. This helps prevent medication errors such as omissions, duplications, incorrect doses, and harmful interactions. This practice enhances communication between providers, improves patient outcomes and reduces hospital readmissions.

Our flu vaccine policy for employees

To protect our patients who are uniquely vulnerable to complications from influenza, all Roswell Park personnel must receive a seasonal influenza vaccine. Any unvaccinated personnel must sign a declination and wear an appropriate isolation mask in all patient care areas from November 1 through March 31.

Protecting our patients from other risks

Creating a protective environment means Roswell Park adheres to certain standards that you don’t see in other hospitals. For example:

  • Masking. During respiratory virus season, Roswell Park requires all employees, patients and visitors to wear a mask in all inpatient units and other designated patient care areas.
  • Flowers/plants. To reduce risk from bacteria or mold, fresh-cut flowers and plants are NOT permitted on the Hematology/Oncology unit, or for Hematology/Oncology patients anywhere in the hospital.

Patient Satisfaction is very important to us. We place a high value on all comments regarding our patients' care and treatment and sincerely appreciate the surveys we receive back regarding a patient's hospital stay. This enables us to continually strengthen our patients’ experience with us. Roswell Park utilizes Press Ganey, a national leader in patient satisfaction research, which allows us to compare our patient satisfaction results with those of 1,572 other hospitals. This data is from CY2024.

  • Roswell Park patients' Overall Rating of Care placed Roswell in the 97th percentile nationwide.
  • Roswell Park patients' Likelihood of Recommending the Hospital also placed Roswell in the 97th percentile nationwide.

The Overall Rating of Physicians' is in the 83rd percentile nationwide.

  • 70% = Doctors explain in a way you understand
  • 87% = Doctors listen carefully to you
  • 88% = Doctors treat with courtesy/respect

The Overall Rating of Nursing is in the 95th percentile nationwide.

  • 91% = Nurses explain in a way you understand
  • 94% = Nurses listen carefully to you
  • 97% = Nurses treat with courtesy/respect

Roswell Park placed in the 77th percentile among 9 Oncology Peer Group Hospitals. Roswell Park's overall score placed it in the 97th percentile nationwide, of the 1,572 Press Ganey Database hospitals.

The Patient and Family Experience team at Roswell Park works to put the needs of our patients and their families first. Whether you are a patient or caregiver, we will support you during your consultation, testing, procedures and into survivorship. Highlights of our work include:

Patient Advocates

Our patient advocates work to make sure your questions are answered and your needs are met. We will listen to your concerns and work resolves any issues quickly. This may include:

  • Resolving any coordination of care issues.
  • Acting as a mediator between you or your loved ones and the medical staff.
  • Preventing possible infringement of your patient rights.
  • Ensuring overall quality of service for inpatient or outpatient care.

Patient & Family Advisory Council

Your voice and our experience matters to us. The Patient & Family Advisory Council ensures that the patients’ perspective, experiences and needs help guide the hospital's programs, policies and priorities. This council brings together patients, caregivers and family members from all walks of life and cancer journeys. Alongside Roswell Park's senior executives, faculty and staff, council members offer invaluable insights that lead to better and positive experiences for our patients and their families.