Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1398595
29 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES 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 hospitals in the U.S. for patient safety performance. Leapfrog has assigned letter grades to hospitals based on their ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections since spring 2012. Twenty-seven hospitals have achieved 19 consecutive "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-Anaheim 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 Rex Hospital (Raleigh) New Jersey Saint Barnabas Medical Center (Livingston) Ohio OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital (Delaware) 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 What researchers learned analyzing COVID-19 mortality rates at 107 hospitals By Mackenzie Bean T he death rate for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the U.S. fell 38 percent between March and May of 2020, but did not continue to significantly decrease through the fall, according to a study published May 3 in JAMA Network Open. For the study, researchers analyzed data on 20,736 adults with COVID-19 admitted to 107 hospitals in 31 states be- tween March and November of 2020. In March and April, the overall in-hospital mortality rate was 19.1 percent. This figure fell to 11.9 percent in May and June, before tapering off at 10.8 percent from Sep- tember through November. While there were small changes in the patient population over the study period — including a slight decrease in age and a higher proportion of women — mortality rates decreased even after researchers adjusted for factors including age, sex, comorbodiidies and COVID-19 disease severity. "Our findings suggest that the decline in mortality could be due to overloaded hospitals and changes in treatment," said lead author Gregory Roth, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle. "Further analysis is needed to understand the drivers more precisely, but it speaks to a crucial need for informa- tion-sharing and identifying hospital best practices that can prevent mortality rates from increasing again, partic- ularly during possible future waves of COVID-19 infec- tions," he added. n