Franklin Square Gets 'B' For Patient Safety

Perry Hall MD

04 May, 2020

3:00 PM

Description

BALTIMORE COUNTY, MD — Several hospitals in Maryland received top grades for safety while others didn't quite measure up, according to new spring 2020 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group. Safety grades are released by the nonprofit organization twice per year, in the spring and the fall. The ratings of more than 2,600 hospitals focus on accidents, injuries and infections, and help to assess how well a facility prevents medical errors and other harm to patients. To determine each state's grade, Leapfrog used up to 28 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. When averaged, performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center received a B overall. The metrics used to determine this spring's hospital grades originated from safety data reported for periods ending in 2018 and 2019. The report does not take into account the strain the new coronavirus outbreak is placing on some hospitals where staff are experiencing shortages of drugs and protection equipment. In Maryland, 12 hospitals received an A grade in the spring 2020 Leapfrog hospital ratings: Anne Arundel Medical CenterGarrett Regional Medical CenterGreater Baltimore Medical CenterHoly Cross Germantown HospitalHoward County General HospitalJohns Hopkins Bayview Medical CenterMedStar Good Samaritan HospitalMedStar St. Mary's HospitalSuburban HospitalUM Baltimore Washington Medical CenterUniversity of Maryland Medical Center Midtown CampusUniversity of Maryland St. Joseph Medical CenterThe latest grades show 33 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an "A" grade while 25 percent earned a "B." Some 35 percent earned a "C" grade, 7 percent a "D" and less than 1 percent received an "F" grade. In Maryland, only one hospital got an "F," and that was Bon Secours in Baltimore. The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries.Leapfrog estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at "A" hospitals, 50,000 lives at other facilities would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths. See a full description of the Leapfrog methodology for hospital safety grades. This article included reporting by Patch editor Max Bennett.