TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - How safe is your hospital? Grades were recently released showing us how they're stacking up against the competition.
The grades for Toledo Hospital, University of Toledo Medical Center, and Mercy's St. Vincent Hospital come from Leapfrog.
After reviewing the grades, some we're above average, while others we're definitely below.
First, if you look at leapfrog's site hospitalsafetyscore.com, the score is a D for Spring 2016. That's based on more than 30 different patient safety measures indicating how well hospitals protect patients from preventable errors, injuries and infection.
Heading over to Mercy's St. V's Hospital, the grade is better.
The website gave them a C. Based on the report, St. V's did better than UTMC in communication between patients and nurses and responsiveness of hospital staff.
Finally, ProMedica's Toledo Hospital fared the best out of all three.
The website gave them a B. Better communication between patients and doctors and better communication about medicines prescribed to patients brought in higher scores.
The information compiled in the list hospitals can provide directly to Leapfrog or they can opt out. In that event, information from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is used to generate a score, another place patient safety data is reported.
UTMC, St. V's, and Toledo Hospital all opted out of the actual survey. Here are the statements the hospitals wrote in response to the scores.
UTMC:
The University of Toledo Medical Center is committed to delivering high quality health care that is focused on patient safety and patient satisfaction. While the medical center does not submit data to Leapfrog Group, we monitor closely the patient safety data reported to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with an eye toward continuous improvement. UTMC was re accredited in 2014 by the Joint Commission, which is the nation's predominant accrediting body that sets the standard for quality patient care and safety. It evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health-care organizations and programs in the United States.
ProMedica Toledo Hospital:
The statement below is from Brian Kaminski, DO, vice president of patient safety and quality at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.
Safety is our top priority at ProMedica Toledo Hospital. Our team of caregivers are committed to providing safe, high-quality care to the community. Our organization regularly evaluates safety metrics in order to continually learn and identify opportunities to improve the level of care we provide.
Additionally, all of our employees and providers receive detailed error-prevention training, hospital leaders participate in daily safety huddles to address any emergent safety issues and the hospital utilizes safety coaches with extensive training in organizational standards and best practices to help increase safety, quality and service excellence.
At ProMedica Toledo Hospital, we realize that a safe care requires an immense amount of teamwork and communication. Speaking up for safety and reporting problems or concerns has become part of our culture.
"Safety first. Excellence always" is our motto.
From Mercy St. Vincent's Hospital:
The health and safety of our patients remains our utmost priority. At Mercy Health - Toledo, we strive continuously to enhance care to ensure patients receive the highest quality of care in any Mercy Health facility where they seek treatment.
Mercy Health chose not to participate in the Leapfrog Group survey, thus the data they are using is incomplete and also old historical data from more than two years ago. As such, the ranking generated on their "hospitalsafetyscore.org" website is an artificial score and not reflective of Mercy Health – St. Vincent Medical Center's quality measures.
We receive numerous website and publication survey requests on a routine basis, however our focus is on patient care and providing patients and their families with the highest quality of care and service.
While we believe transparency is important and provides an opportunity for us as an industry to learn and share best practices, we encourage patients to understand how data is collected and reported on these various websites and publications. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), via their website hospitalcompare.gov, is considered the source of truth for health care data and has a sound statistical process applied equally to all hospitals across the country.
Across all of Mercy Health, the largest health system in Ohio, we have robust initiatives in place around patient safety and are continuously working to enhance the care we provide each and every day to the communities we serve, including right here in Northwest Ohio.
For more information on the hospital grades, click here.
