Leapfrog safety scores not encouraging
The Leapfrog Group released its fourth safety report card for general acute care hospitals recently, and the scores were less than great.
A total of 2,539 acute care hospitals were graded. Leapfrog gave 813 hospitals an A, indicating hospitals with the safest practices and low rates of errors and infections. Another 661 received a B, 893 received a C, 150 received a D, and 22 hospitals received an F.
To get an F, hospitals had to be more than three standard deviations below the mean. In the previous report, 16 hospitals received an F. Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, calls the scores troubling.
"We are burying a population the size of Miami every year from medical errors that can be prevented. A number of hospitals have improved by one or even two grades, indicating hospitals are taking steps toward safer practices, but these efforts aren’t enough," Binder says. "During this time of rapid healthcare transformation, it’s vital that we work together to arm patients with the information they need and tell doctors and hospitals that the time for change is now."
As result of the push for more public reporting of hospitals’ safety efforts, Leapfrog added two new measures to the latest Hospital Safety Score release, including Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTIs) and Surgical Site Infections: Colon (SSI: Colon). While CAUTIs and SSI: Colon have not received as much public attention as other measures, they are among the most common hospital infections and claim a combined 18,000 lives each year, Binder says.
CAUTI and SSI: Colon are among the 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data used to produce a single grade representing a hospital’s overall safety rating.
The Hospital Safety Score is a public service available at no cost online at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.
