Tradition Medical Center’s safety grade – according to an organization that investigates hospital performance and issues grades – has slipped from a B this spring to a C this fall. But the hospital disagrees with the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade findings.
Scott Samples, director of corporate communications and marketing for Martin Health System, owner of Tradition Medical Center, pointed to Leapfrog’s “significant reporting time lag,” which he says does not reflect the current reality of patient safety efforts.
“We continuously monitor our real-time statistics using Leapfrog’s methodologies,” Samples said. “Our three hospitals currently rank as an A.”
Samples also noted that Martin Health System’s hospitals’ safety grades were also affected by unanticipated changes in how Leapfrog derives their metrics. Leapfrog grades hospitals based on nearly 30 different measures, ranging from quantitative assessments, such as infection rates, to qualitative scores, including nursing communication.
Samples pointed to 10 measures related to hospital-acquired conditions and patient-safety indicators that were drawn from the reporting period of October 2015 to June 2017. Five other measures related to patient satisfaction and provider communication were drawn from the reporting period of October 2016 to September 2017.
“This time lag doesn’t reflect our current improvement initiatives,” he said.
New this year to Leapfrog’s assessments was a metric pertaining to new medication bar code scanning safety – the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) evaluation tool. Tradition implemented the new tool, improved and upgraded the electronic medical record, and enhanced its medication safety program. However, “these changes we made are not reflected in the current Leapfrog report,” Samples said.
Martin Health System is in the midst of negotiations with Cleveland Clinic to merge. The slip in the Leapfrog grade is not expected to impact those negotiations, according to Samples.
The other St. Lucie County hospitals – HCA-owned Lawnwood Regional and St. Lucie Medical Center – both received A grades from Leapfrog.
Lawnwood’s grade jumped from the C mark it received in the spring. The hospital had been a steady C since 2016. In 2015, it received an A in both the spring and fall scoring. St. Lucie Medical Center improved by one letter grade, moving from a B to an A. The hospital has bounced between Bs and As since 2015.
Attempts to get comments from the marketing team at the HCA-owned hospitals were unsuccessful. According to a spokeswoman, Landy Angelone, a press release was being worked on late last week but had not been released by press time.
Farther up the Treasure Coast, another hospital saw improvement. Sebastian River Medical Center turned an F safety grade received last spring – one of only two in the state – to a more respectable C. Though recently released, the fall grades were known hospital executives for three weeks prior. That would explain the confidence of Steward’s newly installed CEO, Kyle Sanders, and COO, Ralph Taylor, who also serves as chief nursing officer, earlier this month when they gave a tour of a $60 million renovation at the facility.
The F grade from last spring relied almost entirely on data that pre-dated Steward Health’s acquisition of the hospital in May 2017, occurring under the watch of Community Health Systems, which bought the hospi-tal from Health Management Associates in 2014. While there are still numbers from as long ago as 2015 reflected in this fall’s grade, in many categories, measures reflect six months to a year of Steward management.
Leapfrog says its goal is to reduce the 440,000 deaths each year from hospital errors and injuries by “publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm,” according to its website.
“Many hospitals have safety records that would not be tolerated in any other industry,” the company maintains.
The difference between an A hospital and an F hospital sometimes is a matter of life and death. Leapfrog hired a patient safety and quality team at Johns Hopkins to analyze preventable deaths. It found the chances of dying at a D or F hospital are 50 percent greater than at an A hospital.
Florida’s hospitals overall ranked 19th in the nation, up from 23rd in spring. A third of the state’s hospitals got As.
Additional reporting by Michelle Genz.