Becker's Hospital Review

88 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Where are the 27 Leapfrog straight-'A' hospitals? By Kelly Gooch T he Leapfrog Group released its spring 2021 Hospital Safety Grades April 29, assigning "A" through "F" letter grades to more than 2,700 general acute-care hospi- tals in the U.S. for patient safety performance. Leapfrog has assigned letter grades to hospi- tals based on their ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections since spring 2012. Twen- ty-seven hospitals have achieved 19 consec- utive "A" grades, the highest possible grade, since the launch. e data for this safety grades update are from immediately before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leapfrog said. Still, the organization said some measures used in this spring's update can be a proxy for the safety of care provided to coronavirus patients. Here are the 27 hospitals that have achieved 19 consecutive "A" grades. Arizona Mayo Clinic Hospital (Phoenix) California French Hospital Medical Center (San Luis Obispo) Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Ana- heim Medical Center Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center (San Luis Obispo) Colorado Rose Medical Center (Denver) Florida AdventHealth Daytona Beach Memorial Hospital Miramar Illinois Elmhurst Memorial Hospital Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital (Winfield) OSF St. Mary Medical Center (Galesburg) University of Chicago Medical Center Massachusetts Beverly Hospital Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital (Boston) Saint Anne's Hospital (Fall River) Michigan Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital (Commerce Township) Michigan Medicine (Ann Arbor) Mississippi Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle (Columbus) North Carolina UNC Rex Hospital (Raleigh) New Jersey Saint Barnabas Medical Center (Livingston) Ohio OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital (Del- aware) Texas St. David's Medical Center (Austin) Virginia Inova Loudoun Hospital (Leesburg) Sentara CarePlex Hospital (Hampton) Sentara Leigh Hospital (Norfolk) Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center Washington Virginia Mason Medical Center (Seattle) n Stanford Health Care overhauls surveys By Molly Gamble S tanford Health Care is giving its patient surveys a makeover, with re- vised questions and digital options for completion so patients can share feedback immediately. Here are three ways the Palo Alto, Calif.-based system will change patient surveys and why, as told to Stanford School of Medicine Associate Editor Mandy Erickson: 1. Survey questions will be rewritten with input from a social psycholo- gist and professor of humanities at Stanford University. Alpa Vyas, Stan- ford Health Care's vice president and chief patient experience officer, said existing questions are vague and don't pertain to the patient's most recent experience. To revise, the system is conducting interviews with patients to identify what's most important to them and better understand how patients interpret questions. The surveys will also be tailored to the patient's most recent encounter. 2. Surveys will be shorter. "We will ask each patient fewer questions but still get the same amount of information," said Justin Ko, MD, the physician leader in safety, quality and performance improvement for the Department of Der- matology and the medical director of service excellence. "For example, if we have 20 questions we want to ask, we can ask half of the patients 10 of those questions and the other half the rest of the questions. With more surveys, and better response rates — which we expect with shorter surveys — we can get the same number of answers to each question." 3. Surveys will go out immediately, most by email and eventually by text. Some will be on paper and mailed. "We want more actionable data, in real time," said Ms. Vyas. "With the new system, we'll learn results from the surveys almost immediately, not weeks later." Stanford Health Care is the first academic medical center to use experience management platform Qualtrics for its entire patient experience program, including HCAHPS surveys. n

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