St. V, Harrington, Heywood, Nashoba hospitals tops for safety
UMass Memorial Medical Center was one of three area hospitals to receive a "C" grade on The Leapfrog Group's Fall 2016 Hospital Safety Grades report.
Hospitals in Worcester, Southbridge, Gardner and Ayer led Central Massachusetts in hospital safety grades, while UMass Memorial Health Care hospitals continued to lag behind, according a Washington, D.C. nonprofit.
Based on voluntary reporting to healthcare information nonprofit The Leapfrog Group and data from the federal government, Leapfrog rendered grades from “A” to “C” for nine of the region’s hospital campuses.
Leading the pack with “A” Safety Grades were Harrington Memorial Hospital in Southbridge; Heywood Hospital in Gardner; Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester.
Milford Regional Medical Center earned a “B,” along with HealthAlliance Hospital, owned by UMass Memorial Health Care, in Leominster and MetroWest Medical Center’s Leonard Morse Hospital in Natick.
UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, the region’s biggest player, lagged its smaller counterparts with a grade of “C.” Also earning “C” grades were Marlborough Hospital, a UMass Memorial hospital, and MetroWest Medical Center’s main campus in Framingham.
Omitted from the report were Athol Memorial Hospital and UMass Memorial-owned Clinton Hospital. According to Leapfrog, some hospitals aren’t included due to insufficient data.
A semi-annual report that began in 2012, the hospital safety grades are intended to educate the public on how safe hospitals keep patients from accidents, injuries, errors and infections based on 30 measures of public hospital safety data selected by a panel of experts.
Hospitals may earn grades from “A” through “F,” though only 20 of the 2,633 hospitals graded received an “F” grade on the fall 2016 report. The majority of hospitals, 954, received “B” grades, while 658 receives “As” and 157 received “Cs.”
The next round of grades will be released in April. New data that has not yet been reported may impact grades. For example, data about surgical errors used in the fall 2016 report is from fiscal 2015, which could explain why Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester was found to have no surgical errors. Saint Vincent has claimed responsibility for the error.
Meanwhile, UMass Memorial spokeswoman Debora Spano sought to put the Worcester hospital’s middle-of-the-road score into context.
“Leapfrog is but one of about 50 organizations that report on our system’s quality using a variety of methodologies. Additionally, many consumer ranking systems utilize data that can be interpreted in different ways and is often several years old. Patients should consult with their physician and look at the collective body of quality reporting to make informed decisions about where and how to receive quality health care,” Spano said in an e-mail.
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