Several hospitals in the WBTW News13 viewing area received safety grades from Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade for fall 2018.
“The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement.” according to the organization’s website. “Taken together, those performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. The Safety Grade includes 28 measures, all currently in use by national measurement and reporting programs. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.”
To read more about the specific measures used in the scores, click here.
Hospitals in the News13 area that received “A” grades for fall 2018 include:
- Carolinas Hospital System- Florence
- Conway Medical Center
- Grand Strand Medical Center
- McLeod Regional Medical Center of the Pee Dee
The following hospitals in our area received “B” grades for fall 2018:
- Carolinas Hospital System- Marion
- McLeod Loris
- McLeod Seacoast
The hospitals in the area that received a “C” grade for fall 2018 include:
- Carolina Pines Regional Medical Center
- Tidelands Health Georgetown Memorial Hospital
- Tidelands Health Waccamaw Community Hospital
One hospital in South Carolina, Baptist Easley Hospital in Easley, received a “D” grade. The Regional Medical Center of Orangeburg and Calhoun Counties, in Orangeburg, was the only hospital in the state to receive an “F” grade.
Fall 2018 grades for hospitals in North Carolina include:
- Columbus Regional Healthcare System, Whiteville: “A”
- Scotland Health Care System- Laurinburg: “B”
- Southeastern Regional Medical Center- Lumberton: “B”
There were no hospitals in North Carolina that received “D” or “F” grades.
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades doesn’t assign grades to “military or VA hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children’s hospitals, outpatient surgery centers, etc.,” according to the organization’s website. “Our experts are studying ways to rate them in the future.”
The organization also provides state rankings “based on the number of ‘A’ hospitals they have compared to the total number of graded hospitals on the Fall 2018 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade,” the website adds. These rankings include the 50 states and Washington, D.C. South Carolina was ranked 26th and North Carolina was ranked 5th.
The full state rankings for Fall 2018 can be found here.
For a full list of graded hospitals and more information about those scores, click here.
