Fewer Florida hospitals aced the Leapfrog Group’s biennial Hospital Safety Score than on the last report six months ago. On the other hand, none of them flunked.
The update released today found that nine fewer Florida hospitals received an A, compared to the October 2013 report.
The Spring report ranked 157 hospitals of the roughly 300 licensed facilities in the state that participated in the survey.
A total of 61 earned As, 48 scored B, 42 earned a C and four scored a D. None of the hospitals failed this year’s survey, posted today at hospitalsafetyscore.org.
The one hospital that earned an F a year ago, Wuestoff Medical Center in Melbourne, improved its score to a D. While 14 hospitals received a D last year, the only others in the below-average category in the Spring 2014 ranking were: Cape Coral Hospital; Citrus Memorial Health System in Inverness and St. Petersburg General Hospital.
Urban centers, where most of the state’s hospitals are located, featured the largest concentration of A-rated facilities. Likewise, they also included the weakest – or D-rated - performers.
Several smaller communities and rural pockets of the state earned high marks, including hospitals in Sebring, Lake Placid and Okeechobee.
Across the nation, more than 2,500 participating hospitals were assigned A, B, C, D, and F grades in the biennial report. One third have seen a 10-percent-or-better improvement since 2012. The report measures hospitals nationwide on their ability to prevent errors, injuries and infections.
According to Leapfrog, research shows that 1 in 25 patients acquires an infection in the hospital. More than 1,000 people die each day from preventable medical errors. The report indicates that there has been an overall 6.3 percent improvement in that category since 2012.
Forty-eight of 50 states saw an improvement in their mean scores, Leapfrog said. The exceptions were the District of Columbia and Wyoming. Washington D.C. and Wyoming along with Alaska, Idaho and Nebraska were the only states without an A grade. The best performing state was Maine with 74 percent of its hospitals receiving an A.
Leapfrog, a non-profit group that represents some of the nation’s major employers, uses 28 different criteria in its biennial survey. It includes:
- Foreign Object Retained - measures instances when surgical tools are left inside a patient.
- Air Embolism - air bubbles in the bloodstream from tubes and syringes not being managed properly.
- Pressure Ulcer — Stages 3 and 4 - commonly known as bedsores, it results from a patient remaining in the same position for too long.
- Falls and Trauma - measures when patients fall during a hospital stay.
- CLABSI - Central line-associated bloodstream infections, which occur when small tubes inserted into the neck or chest are not cleaned or inserted properly.
- CAUTI - compares the ratio of catheter-associated infections to a national average.
- SSI: Colon - Compares the the number of surgical site infections to a national average.
- PSI 4: Death Among Surgical Inpatients - Measures the rate of patients who die from complications developed from surgery.
- PSI 6: Iatrogenic Pneumothorax - Measures the chances a patient's lung could be punctured during surgery.
- PSI 11: Postoperative Respiratory Failure - Measures occurrences of a patient not being able to breathe after elective surgery.
- PSI 12: Postoperative PE/DVT - Measures the rate patients develop blood clots after surgery.
- PSI 14: Postoperative Wound Dehiscence - Measures the rate that surgical wounds will open up after surgery.
- PSI 15: Accidental Puncture or Laceration - Measures the rate that accidental cuts occur during treatment.
