Most Kentucky hospitals get a ‘C’ on a twice-a-year safety report card, including Jewish, which got a rare ‘F’ on the last report
Screenshot of Hazard ARH scores shows detail for infection issues and tabs for other issues.
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By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
For the fourth grading period in a row, a nonprofit group that rates patient safety in hospitals has given Cs to most of the 49 Kentucky hospitals it rated.
The Leapfrog Group, based in Washington, D.C., rates more than 2,600 hospitals. Most of Kentucky’s 126 hospitals were not rated,. The group does not grade hospitals with “critical access” status because they don’t have to report quality measures to the federal government, nor does it grade hospitals for which there aren’t enough publicly reported data or specialty or government hospitals.
Leapfrog gave As to 12 Kentucky hospitals, or about 24 percent of those graded. It gave Bs to 10, Cs to 24, and Ds to 3. Most of the changes from the last report, in November, came from hospitals in the two lowest grades moving into the C category, with only a few swaps in the upper grades.
The only hospital to get a failing grade last fall, Jewish Hospital in Louisville, jumped to a C grade in this one, after having received a string of Ds since the spring of 2016 before getting a failing grade in the last report.
The University of Louisville acquired Jewish Hospital and other facilities from KentuckyOne Health last fall. David McArthur, public relations director for U of L Health, told Chris Larson of Louisville Business First that the system continually strives for patient safety improvements.
“The Leapfrog grade increase for Jewish Hospital reflects improvement by U of L Health for the self-reporting of process data,” McArthur told Larson in an e-mail. “U of L Hospital was already meeting the self-reporting standard.” That hospital again got a D, as did Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, which was one of the facilities bought from KentuckyOne.
McArthur said Leapfrog is using the same federal outcome data from fall 2019, so “With no new data, no score improvement was expected there.” Because of the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals were allowed to use their survey responses from 2019 in 2020, unless they chose to update it, Leapfrog said.
Hazard ARH Regional Medical Center got a D for the third time in a row, after getting Bs and Cs in prior reports.
The twice-yearly grades are calculated using 28 performance measures of patient safety that indicate how well hospitals protect patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections. The report uses data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Leapfrog’s own survey, and other supplemental data sources. Hospitals are only graded if they have submitted adequate data for evaluation.
The Leapfrog site offers details on each of the measures under headings titled infections, problems with surgery, practices to prevent errors, safety problems, doctors, nurses and hospital staff. It also includes an easy-to-read, color-coded scale that indicates how the hospital is performing. For example, as shown in the graph above, Hazard ARH performed below average in three infection-control categories, but above average on two.
“While many hospitals are good at keeping their patients safe, some hospitals aren’t,” says Leapfrog. “As many as 440,000 people die every year from preventable errors in hospitals.”
High scorers
St. Elizabeth Healthcare-Edgewood has received As on every Leapfrog report card since spring 2014, the first year it was graded.
Other hospitals on the A list are: Baptist Health Lexington; Clark Regional Medical Center in Winchester; Georgetown Community Hospital; Louisville’s Norton Audubon Hospital, Norton Brownsboro Hospital, Norton Hospital and Norton Women’s & Children’s Hospital; St. Elizabeth Heatlhcare-Ft. Thomas; St. Elizabeth Hospital-Florence; Mercy Health Lourdes in Paducah and Whitesburg ARH Hospital.
Mercy Health Lourdes and Whitesburg ARH were the only two on this list to change their status since the last grading period, both moving up from a B.
Saluting the repeated As for all his adult-service hospitals, Norton Healthcare President and CEO Russell Cox called it “a testament to the hard work of our dedicated providers and employees, who consistently strive to deliver safe, high-quality care to our patients. Never has this been more apparent than during the current public health crisis with the covid-19 pandemic.”
Shifts up and down
Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown fell to a B after getting its first-ever A in last fall’s report, after getting four Cs in a row. Harrison Memorial Hospital in Cynthiana also dropped to a B, after receiving three As in a row.
Baptist Health Richmond moved up to a B, after getting three Cs in a row, and Frankfort Regional Medical Center regained its B status after a C in the last report.
Other hospitals on the B list are Owensboro Health, Saint Joseph East and Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Saint Joseph-London and Glasgow’s T.J. Sampson Community Hospital.
Most of the hospitals got Cs, and most of the changes were to that status.
Hardin Memorial Hospital in Elizabethtown moved to a C after getting a B in the last report; Baptist Health Paducah dropped to a C, after getting three Bs in a row.
Highlands Regional Medical Center in Prestonsburg moved up to a C, after four Ds in a row.
And after getting their first Ds since the spring of 2016, the University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital and UK HealthCare Good Samaritan Hospital and moved back up to a C status.
Only a few Kentucky hospitals have ever received a failing grade from Leapfrog. Other than Jewish Hospital last fall, they have been Lexington’s Saint Joseph East in fall 2015 (it got a B this time); Methodist Hospital of Henderson, spring 2019; and Campbellsville’s Taylor Regional Hospital in spring 2013. Both got Cs this time.
Click here for a list of Kentucky hospitals and their Leapfrog safety grades. Click here for a list of frequently asked questions about the report.