Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

27 QUALITY MEASUREMENT Leapfrog Releases Fall Hospital Safety Grades: 5 Things to Know By Heather Punke T he Leapfrog Group released its fall 2016 Hospital Safety Grades Oct. 31, assigning A through F letter grades to 2,633 hospitals in the U.S. Here are five things to know about this season's update. 1. Leapfrog changed the name of its grading system from the Leapfrog Hos- pital Safety Score to Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade. Even though the name has changed, the program remains the same. 2. Leapfrog releases safety grade updates twice per year, and this fall's grades are based on the same methodology used in the spring. e grade reflects hospitals' per- formance on a number of key metrics that fall into two categories: process/structural measures, such as computerized physician order entry, nurse communication and hand hygiene; and outcomes measures, such as falls, surgical site infections, methicillin-re- sistant Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridi- um difficile, among others. 3. Data is pulled from the Leapfrog Hos- pital Survey and CMS' Hospital Compare website. 4. e breakdown of fall grades earned by the 2,633 hospitals is as follows: • 844 earned an A (up from 798 in the spring) • 658 earned a B (up from 639 in the spring) • 954 earned a C (down from 957 in the spring) • 157 earned a D (down from 162 in the spring) • 20 earned an F (up from 15 in the spring) 5. Some states had better-performing hospi- tals than others. For instance, 66.7 percent of Hawaii's hospitals earned an A grade (eight of 12 graded hospitals), while no hospitals in Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota and Wash- ington, D.C., earned an A grade. n Where Are the 20 Leapfrog F Hospitals? By Heather Punke O ut of the 2,633 hospitals that received a Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade this fall, 20 re- ceived a failing grade, up from the 15 that earned an F in the spring. Leapfrog's Hospital Safety Grade assigns A through F letter grades to U.S. hospitals twice each year. The grades are peer-re- viewed and Leapfrog's scoring methodol- ogy is fully transparent to the public. This fall, hospitals with a failing grade are located in seven states and the District of Columbia. California Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (Colton) Downey Regional Medical Center El Centro Regional Medical Center Fremont Medical Center (Yuba City) Inland Valley Medical Center (Wildomar) Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District (Brawley) Rancho Springs, Medical Center (Murrieta) Rideout Memorial Hospital (Marysville) Tulare Regional Medical Center Washington, D.C. Not For Profit Hospital Corp./United Medical Center Florida Jackson North Medical Center (North Miami Beach) Lehigh Regional Medical Center (Lehigh Acres) Wuesthoff Medical Center-Melbourne Mississippi Delta Regional Medical Center (Greenville) New York St. John's Episcopal Hospital (Far Rockaway) SUNY Downstate Medical Center University Hospital of Brooklyn Oklahoma Jackson County Memorial Hospital (Altus) Pennsylvania Ohio Valley General Hospital (McKees Rocks) Washington Highline Medical Center (Burien) Samaritan Hospital (Moses Lake) n CMS Updates Overall Star Ratings: What's Changed? By Heather Punke C MS' Hospital Compare released an update of its Overall Hospi- tal Quality Star Rating program on Oct. 19, the first time the agency has updated the program's data since it launched in July. The October star ratings include updated patient experience, safety of care, effectiveness of care and timeli- ness of care data. A hospital's star rating is only calculated using as many measures for which data is available, from as few as nine to as many as 64. In July, the average number of measures used to calculate a hospital's star rating was roughly 40, but in the Oc- tober update it dropped slightly to 39. An individual hospital's rating may change based on how its own data changed from July, but it also accounts for other hospital's data — meaning if many hospitals improved their perfor- mance, and one hospital did not, the relatively lower-performing hospital may now have a lower star rating than before. In July, 102 hospitals received a five- star rating. Now, 112 hospitals earned the top rating. See below for how Oc- tober's star ratings compare to those released in July. • Five stars: 112 in October (102 in July) • Four stars: 970 (934) • Three stars: 1,789 (1,770) • Two stars: 701 (723) • One star: 121 (133) Additionally, in July, 937 hospitals did not have enough data to receive an overall star rating. Now, just 910 hospi- tals do not have a star rating. n

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