Fall scorecards are in. Here’s how Wichita-area hospitals rated on patient safety.
Wichita hospitals received above-average or excellent scores in the latest round of patient safety grades handed out by the Leapfrog Group, a Washington-based watchdog focused on reducing preventable medical errors, illnesses and deaths.
But other health care facilities in the metropolitan area didn’t fare quite as well on their fall 2020 scorecards.
All five of the Wesley Healthcare and Ascension Via Christi hospitals in the city received As or Bs, according to www.hospitalsafetygrade.org.
Two suburban hospitals — in Andover and Newton — received C grades. Leapfrog gave the other area facility, in El Dorado, a D.
The worst grade a hospital can get is an F.
In total, Leapfrog scored 31 Kansas health care facilities, about a quarter of the community hospitals operating in the state. The group does not grade all medical facilities including federal and military hospitals, specialty hospitals and those with too little patient data.
Most of the community hospitals in rural Kansas counties fall into that last category because typically they don’t see many people annually for the conditions and procedures assessed by the patient safety evaluation, said Cindy Samuelson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Hospital Association.
Still, the rankings may be among resources useful for people trying to determine where to seek treatment, she said.
“It’s one of the many tools hospitals and others in the community can look at to make sure patients are getting the best care.”
Ranked hospitals in the Wichita area had mixed responses about whether the ratings accurate reflect how safe patients actually are when they seek care at their facilities.
Wesley Healthcare president and CEO Bill Voloch said the scores given both to Wesley’s main campus and its Woodlawn location “speak directly to the initiatives we have championed to improve our patient care and safety processes.” The hospitals received As, making them among the country’s top rated.
Others say the grades aren’t a complete picture because they don’t take other performance assessments into account and rely partly on an optional survey that some hospitals don’t fill out.
They also rely on publicly sourced data that in many cases is a few years old.
“We’re not sending them all of our data, which explains the gaps,” said Shelly Conrady, director of marketing and communication for Newton Medical Center, which received a C rating.
The hospital, which is changing its name to NMC Health on Jan. 1, didn’t complete Leapfrog’s optional survey this year. Doing so might have boosted its grade.
But the hospital has the highest quality rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Conrady said.
The Leapfrog Group evaluates more than 2,600 acute care hospitals nationwide twice a year on more than two dozen safety measures that include dangerous infection and injury rates, medication mix-ups and other errors. The fall ratings were released Dec. 14. Much of the data used to score hospitals comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other public sources.
But facilities may also report other quality and safety information like hand-washing habits using the voluntary survey, which is based on national performance measures. The overall scores are meant to provide hospitals with a benchmark to improve patient care. Breakdowns of the grades show how a hospital scored on individual measures, how it compares to other hospitals and what safer hospitals do to prevent medical mistakes.
Leapfrog considers A-graded hospitals safest for patients, but its ratings aren’t the only performance checks a person can use to help choose a health care facility. Other ratings are posted on www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare and www.qualitycheck.org, for example.
About 34% of rated hospitals nationwide received an A grade, 24% received a B and 35% earned a C this fall, according to Leapfrog. The group gave around 7% a D and flunked fewer than 1%.
None of the publicly sourced data used to figure the grades came from this year as hospitals have struggled to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Presumably that data from 2020 will be used on future assessments.
There are 122 community hospitals in Kansas, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. Seventeen of the state’s 105 counties have two or more community hospitals and 78 have only one. Ten counties have none.
Grade breakdown
Wesley Medical Center received A grades overall at both its main campus, 550 N. Hillside, and at its 2610 N. Woodlawn location, although their performance on some individual measures did fall below average.
The hospital’s main campus ranked well on its Clostridium difficile (C. diff), blood and post-colon surgery site infection rates but logged more Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections than average. It also received high marks on most surgery-related problems evaluated and did better than most hospitals at implementing error prevention practices.
Wesley also rated better than average for having enough qualified nurses and specially trained ICU doctors, but patients felt their health care providers didn’t communicate well and took too long to respond to requests for help.
Patients of the north Woodlawn location also cited problems talking with doctors and nurses and felt their wait times were too long when they needed help with pain, new symptoms or going to the bathroom. Rates of serious breathing problems, falls and injuries, and urinary tract infections also ranked worse than average.
But the hospital excelled at preventing other surgery-related and safety issues like leaving dangerous objects in a patient’s body. There was not enough data to evaluate the location’s performance on MRSA and other surgical site infections.
“Exceptional outcomes based on best practices are our goal, and we are proud that those efforts have again been recognized on a national level,” Voloch, the Wesley Healthcare CEO, said.
Leapfrog gave Wichita’s other large hospital system, Ascension Via Christi, B grades overall at its three campuses.
The ratings are some of the highest the hospitals have received recently, in part because they completed Leapfrog’s voluntary survey for the first time in nearly five years, Ascension officials said.
The grade “speaks volumes about our team’s high level of commitment to patient safety and associate engagement no matter what other types of challenges we may be facing,” said Carla Yost, Ascension Via Christi’s chief nursing officer.
“We will be using these scores as a baseline as we incorporate them, along with feedback from the other quality surveys and data-base registries in which we participate, to make further patient safety and associate engagement improvements.”
Downtown Wichita’s St. Francis hospital excelled at all error prevention including safe medication administration and hand-washing habits but ranked worse than average on all infection rates and at avoiding dangerous bed sores and patient falls. While the hospital demonstrated leadership that generally leads to fewer errors and had enough qualified nurses and specially trained ICU doctors, Leapfrog found patients reported staff communication and responsiveness issues.
Southeast Wichita’s St. Joseph campus, meanwhile, scored well on its MRSA and C. diff infection rates; avoided dangerous blood clots, accidental cuts and tears better than most hospitals; implemented above-average error prevention practices across the board; and had enough qualified staff to care for patients. But it did worse than average on blood and urinary tract infection rates, surgical problems including collapsed lungs and the number of patients who developed dangerous bed sores and fell.
Located in far northwest Wichita, St. Teresa scored above-average on all error prevention, safety problems and staffing measures but ranked worse than other hospitals when it came to serious breathing problems and C.diff and surgical site infection rates. There was not enough information to rate its MRSA, blood and urinary tract infection rates nor deaths from serious treatable complications.
Kansas Medical Center, 1124 W. 21st St. in Andover, and Newton Medical Center, 600 Medical Center Dr. in Newton, both received Cs on their Fall 2020 Leapfrog patient safety scorecards. Neither hospital completed Leapfrog’s voluntary survey, which may have dinged their overall grades.
The Andover hospital scored well on the infection rates that had enough data available to assess and on its avoidance of safety and some surgical problems, but fell below average in a number of areas including rates of collapsed lungs in patients, surgical wound splits, accidental cuts and tears and how it communicates about medicines and discharges. Patients also reported feeling like their nurses and hospital staff lacked when it came to communication and quickly responding to requests for help.
The hospital did not respond to a request for comment from The Eagle.
The Newton hospital excelled at keeping blood infections, collapsed lungs, serious breathing problems and other safety issues low, making sure enough qualified nurses were available and doctor communication with patients was high. But it rated worse than average on C. diff and urinary tract infection numbers, dangerous blood clots and accidental cuts and tears, and dangerous bed sores.
Leapfrog also thought doctors’ use of computers to order medications, hand-washing habits and other staffing issues were problematic.
“It (the C grade) doesn’t represent a complete picture of our safety practices,” Conrady, Newton Medical Center’s spokeswoman, said.
Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital, 720 W. Central in El Dorado, received the area’s lowest grade, a D. It did not report enough data to evaluate or declined to report information on several measures, and ranked worse than average on nearly half of other areas assessed. But it scored better than average on marks that looked at the number of dangerous objects left in patients’ bodies during surgery, avoiding gas bubbles that can stop patient blood flow and rates of serious breathing problems.
Patients there also generally reported feeling content with how their doctors and nurses communicated and overall felt staff responded quickly enough when they needed help.
The hospital did not return a message seeking comment on the grade.
Leapfrog gave only two other Kansas hospitals a D or F: Salina Regional Health Center and Southwest Medical Center in Liberal. Neither completed the voluntary survey.
How Kansas compares to other states
Overall, 32.26% of Kansas hospitals rated received an A grade this fall, compared with 26.67% a year ago. When compared to other states, Kansas fell in the bottom half of overall A ratings, ranking 27th. Maine received the top spot, with 62.5% of hospitals scoring an A.
There were no A-rated hospitals in Alaska, South Dakota and North Dakota, according to Leapfrog.
Out of states that neighbor Kansas, only Colorado received a higher rank overall this fall — 9th — with 47.62% of hospitals receiving the Leapfrog Group’s top grade. Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma all had fewer than 24% of hospitals with an A rating.
Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality estimates patients who seek care at B-rated hospitals have a 35% greater risk of dying from avoidable circumstances and those at C-rated hospitals have an 88% greater risk than patients at A-rated hospitals. The risk for patients at D- and F-rated hospitals is nearly double.
More than 400,000 people die annually from preventable medical errors, illnesses, infections and other harm.
