Latest Leapfrog Safety Grades Include Post-Op Sepsis
The most recent grades from The Leapfrog Group represent the largest set of hospitals ever evaluated, with grades assigned to 2,901 facilities. More than 30 evidence-based measures of patient safety were assessed, including postoperative sepsis, blood leakage, and kidney injury for the first time.
New Measures Included
The report includes 200 more hospitals than were previously graded, says Erica Mobley, director of operations with The Leapfrog Group. Methodology updates enabled them to include the CMS measure PSI 90, a composite measure of several patient safety errors.
“By including PSI 90, we were able to capture safety errors that were not included in the safety grade, but it also allows us to measure hospitals that might have slightly lower volume and previously were not able to report on some of the other measures,” Mobley says. “It’s great to be able to include more hospitals. We update our methodology so that we are always incorporating the most current evidence-based measures of safety. This was an exciting measure to include this time around.”
There was improvement in two process measures related to medication safety: Clostridioides difficile infections and deaths after surgical complications. But there was decline in performance on measures related to central line infections and MRSA, Mobley says.
“There is evidence that some of the patient safety gains we have made in the past may have slipped back during COVID. The most recent report includes some information from 2020, but the majority of the data are from 2019, so I wouldn’t say we have seen the full impact of the COVID data yet,” she explains. “Hospitals really need to go back and put their focus on these core tenets of infection prevention, with things like checklists and more robust handwashing policies, to get back to the basics that they had been doing so well on.”
These are some highlights from the fall 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade report:
- Thirty-two percent of hospitals received an A, 26% received a B, 35% received a C, 7% received a D, and less than 1% received an F.
- The five states with the highest percentages of A hospitals are Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho, Massachusetts, and Colorado.
- There were no “A” hospitals in Delaware, Washington, DC, or North Dakota.
SOURCE
- Erica Mobley, Director of Operations, The Leapfrog Group, Washington, DC. Phone: (202) 292-6813.
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