How safe is the hospital you’re choosing for care? Any time you are receiving any form of medical treatment you want to make sure you’re getting the best and safest treatment possible. Luckily for more than 20 years, The Leapfrog Group has published hospital data on safety and quality. According to their website, they undertake this endeavor in order to “push the health care industry forward”. This helps consumers find high-value care and make informed health care decisions. They release data for the entire country but we’ve narrowed it down for you North Carolina, with the hospital safety grades for the greater Charlotte area.
Our region is home to two large hospital systems both Atrium and Novant as well as some smaller regional facilities. Overall the vast majority of hospitals received “A” grades. Though a couple of North and South Carolina hospitals even received a “C” hospital safety grade. Ouch. Can’t say I’ll be seeking care there. Hopefully these grades do their intended purpose though and lead to change benefitting the patients.
How are these grades determined?
According to Leapfrog:
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades (formerly known as Hospital Safety Scores) are assigned to nearly 3,000 general acute-care hospitals across the nation twice annually. The Safety Grade is the gold standard measure of patient safety, cited in MSNBC, The New York Times, and AARP The Magazine.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses more than 30 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Additional information is gathered from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. Taken together, those performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance. This includes keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.