Greenwood Leflore Hospital has for the second time this year received a “B” rating on a national survey of health care safety.
The back-to-back B’s are the highest grade the Greenwood hospital has ever received from The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization that rates the quality and safety in most U.S. hospitals twice a year.
The fall ratings on an A-to-F scale were released Wednesday and were first reported by The Taxpayers Channel.
“The care that we provide our patients is a direct result of the teamwork that our employees and medical staff show day in and day out,” hospital CEO Jason Studley said Thursday in a prepared statement. “This ‘B’ rating is a result of our team continuing to work together to improve safety and quality of the service we provide.”
Prior to this year, the best the Greenwood hospital had previously done was a “C’ in the semiannual evaluation of its ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.
Leapfrog evaluated 2,901 U.S. hospitals in the fall. It grades them based on their responses to a survey as well as the latest publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that administers those two government-sponsored health insurance programs. The rating considered 32 measures in all, five more than previously.
The fall survey was the first to include how the hospitals have fared during the pandemic. The Greenwood hospital’s statement about the latest rating referred to the strain that COVID-19 has created.
“Greenwood Leflore Hospital continues to be successful even during challenging times, proving we are safer now than ever before,” it said.
The Greenwood hospital received nine perfect scores, the same as in the spring.
It had no cases of dangerous objects left in a patient’s body during surgery; no air or gas bubbles in the blood; and no incidences of MRSA infection, a particularly difficult type of bacterial infection to treat.
Its other perfect scores were for doctors ordering medication through a computer, safe medication administration, specially trained doctors caring for intensive care patients, staff working together to prevent errors, effective leadership to prevent errors and handwashing.
Its lowest scores were for infection in the blood, surgical site infections after colon surgery and for C. diff. infections, a gastrointestinal disorder that typically occurs among older patients after use of antibiotic medications.
As it has previously, the hospital downplayed the Leapfrog ratings. “The Leapfrog rating system is just one tool among many that patients can use when making health care decisions such as choosing a hospital,” the hospital’s statement said.
Overall, 32% of U.S. hospitals received an “A” this time around on the Leapfrog report, 26% a “B,” 35% a “C,” 7% a “D” and less than 1% an “F.” In Mississippi, 44 hospitals were graded. There were 14 A’s, 10 B’s, 19 C’s and one D. No Mississippi hospital received an F.
Four hospitals nearby to Greenwood also earned a B: Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland, Delta Health - The Medical Center in Greenville, Delta Health - Northwest Regional in Clarksdale and University of Mississippi Medical Center - Grenada. South Sunflower County Hospital in Indianola received a C.
North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville and Tallahatchie General Hospital in Charleston are not graded by Leapfrog. Because they are categorized as “critical access hospitals,” they are not required to publicly report their safety record. This, according to Leapfrog, leaves the rating organization’s experts with too little information to give such hospitals a grade.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
