SEBASTIAN — Sebastian River Medical Center leadership and staff were disappointed to learn last week that the hospital’s prestigious A letter grade for hospital safety in 2013 has dropped to a B grade for 2014.
While still a good rating, the B grade does not put SRMC in the top third of US hospitals, ranked by the well-respected hospital safety watch dog Leapfrog.
“Many factors go into the Leapfrog rating and our team is already working hard to regain our top status in future reports,“ said the hospital’s communications director Angela Dickens, who pointed out that SRMC’s “core measures are all 100%, demonstrating that we make patient safety a top priority.”
By core measures, Dickens is referring to eight core categories where SRMC ranked with the top performing hospitals in the country, just as it did in 2013. Those categories include giving the appropriate treatment for blood clots, taking the necessary safety precautions with catheters and meticulously administering antibiotics.
In a few categories the hospital was within a tenth of a point from the ranking of the top-performing hospitals. Also, Sebastian did not report in several categories, which affected its overall safety score.
The Leapfrog website says this about the importance of the ratings: “Some people do more research on what car to buy than what hospital to go to for medical care. The Hospital Safety Score provides data and research to help you make informed decisions about a critical aspect of your hospital stay – safety.”
If a hospital received a grade below A, the website recommends that prospective patients talk to their doctors about how the hospital can improve in 2015.
Florida hospitals ranked ninth in the country with 61 of 156 hospitals receiving A grades. Like Sebastian, 47 other hospitals in the state got a B grade, and 42 got a C, while four got a D.
Sebastian’s safety score for 2014 puts it in the top 60 percent of the safest hospitals in Florida.
“We have an active interdisciplinary team among the physicians on our medical staff and our employees who continuously work together to provide patients with the highest quality of care,” said Dickens.