Boulder Community Foothills Hospital Gets High Leapfrog Grade

BOULDER, CO — How safe is Boulder Community Foothills Hospital? While you’re likely in good hands, new safety grades released by a national watchdog group focused on improving health care safety show the facility might have room for improvement.

The answer varies from hospital to hospital, but you more than likely can find at least one nearby facility where you’re in good hands, according to new safety grades released by a national watchdog organization focused on improving health care in the United States.

The Leapfrog Group on Wednesday released the fall 2021 Hospital Safety Grade, which assigns a letter grade to the nation’s general hospitals based on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections that kill or harm patients.

Boulder Community Foothills Hospital, at 4747 Arapahoe Ave., received a 'B' grade.

This year’s list reviewed just over 2,900 hospitals, the largest number of hospitals ever graded.

“As the pandemic continues, we all have heightened awareness of the importance of hospitals in our communities and in our lives,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, in a news release. “It is critical that all hospitals put patient safety first."

Now we have more information on more hospitals than ever before, so people can protect themselves and their families,” Binder said.

Like what you're reading? Invite a friend to subscribe to free Boulder newsletters and real-time email alerts.

Nurses, doctors and hospital employees across Colorado are overworked and exhausted as hospitalizations surge, state public health officials said. Hospital bed capacity has hit an all-time low of 759 available beds in our state and fewer than 100 ICU beds.

But despite all the setbacks and struggles as the pandemic continues, more than two dozen Colorado hospitals received an 'A' or 'B' grade, and they deserve to be recognized.

Here’s a snapshot of how hospitals in Colorado were graded:

Centura Health Castle Rock Adventist Hospital: 'A'
2350 Meadows Blvd, Castle Rock
View the full score

Centura Health-Avista Adventist Hospital: 'A'
100 Health Park Drive, Louisville
View the full score

Centura Health-Longmont United Hospital: 'A'
1950 Mountain View Avenue, Longmont
View full score

Centura Health-Mercy Regional Medical Center: 'A'
1010 Three Springs Boulevard, Durango
View full score

Centura Health-Penrose Hospital: 'A'
2222 N. Nevada Avenue, Colorado Springs
View full score

Centura Health-St. Anthony North Hospital: 'A'
14300 Orchard Parkway, Westminster
View the full score

Centura Health-St. Francis Medical Center: 'A'
6001 E. Woodmen Rd., Colorado Springs
View the full score

Centura Health-St. Mary Corwin Medical Center: 'A'
1008 Minnequa Ave., Pueblo
View full score

Community Hospital: 'A'
2351 G Road, Grand Junction
View full score

Delta County Memorial Hospital: 'A'
1501 E 3rd Street, Delta
View full score

Good Samaritan Medical Center: 'A'
200 Exempla Circle, Lafayette
View full score

Lutheran Medical Center: 'A'
8300 W. 38th Ave., Wheat Ridge
View full score

Platte Valley Medical Center: 'A'
1600 Prairie Center Parkway, Brighton
View the full score

Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center: 'A'
1719 E. 19th Ave., Denver
View full score

Rose Medical Center: 'A'
4567 E. 9th Ave., Denver
View full score

Sky Ridge Medical Center: 'A'
10101 Ridge Gate Parkway, Lone Tree
View full score

St. Mary's Hospital and Medical Center: 'A'
2635 N. 7th St., Grand Junction
View full score

Swedish Medical Center: 'A'
501 E. Hampden Ave., Englewood
View full score

UCHealth Broomfield Hospital: 'A'
11820 Destination Drive, Broomfield
View full score

UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center: 'A'
1024 Central Park Drive, Steamboat Springs
View full score

Vail Health: 'A'
181 W. Meadow Drive, Vail
View full score

Boulder Community Foothills Hospital: 'B'
4747 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder
View full score

Centura Health -St. Anthony Hospital: 'B'
11600 West 2nd Place, Lakewood
View full score

Centura Health-Littleton Adventist Hospital: 'B'
7700 S. Broadway, Littleton
View full score

McKee Medical Center: 'B'
2000 Boise Ave., Loveland
View the full score

North Colorado Medical Center: 'B'
1801 16th Street, Greeley
View full score

North Suburban Medical Center: 'B'
9191 Grant St., Thornton
View the full score

Saint Joseph Hospital: 'B'
1375 East 19th Ave., Denver
View full score

Centura Health-Parker Adventist Hospital: 'C'
9395 Crown Crest Blvd., Parker
View full score

Centura Health-Porter Adventist Hospital: 'C'
2525 S. Downing St., Denver
View the full score

Colorado Plains Medical Center: 'C'
1000 Lincoln St., Fort Morgan
View full score

Denver Health Medical Center: 'C'
777 Bannock St., Denver
View full score

Medical Center of Aurora: 'C'
1501 S. Potomac St., Aurora
View full score

Montrose Memorial Hospital: 'C'
800 S. Third St., Montrose
View full score

UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital: 'C'
1750 E Ken Pratt Blvd., Longmont
View full score

UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies: 'C'
2500 Rocky Mountain Ave., Loveland
View full score

UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central: 'C'
1400 E. Boulder St., Colorado Springs
View full score

UCHealth Memorial Hospital North: 'C'
4050 Briargate Pkwy., Colorado Springs
View full score

UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital: 'C'
1024 S. Lemay Ave., Fort Collins
View full score

Valley View Hospital: 'C'
1906 Blake Ave., Glenwood Springs
View full score

Parkview Medical Center: 'D'
400 W. 16th St., Pueblo
View full score

SLV Health Regional Medical Center : 'D'
106 Blanca Ave., Alamosa
View full score

UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital : 'D'
12605 E. 16th Ave., Aurora
View full score

"We recognize the importance of measuring and public reporting of quality performance and safety and we work diligently to continually improve," the Medical Center of Aurora said in a statement.

"Our physicians, nurses, and colleagues are dedicated to providing exceptional care for our patients. We consistently focus on our clinical and operational performance, both of which are keys to a providing exceptional, high quality patient care. Additionally, we are deeply grateful for our physicians, nurses, and frontline providers who have demonstrated enormous resilience and a deep desire to care for our patients and communities over the past twenty months."

How were the grades created?

To determine each hospital’s grade, a panel of medical experts selected 30 evidence-based measures of patient safety such as postoperative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury. They then determined the weight of each measure based on evidence, opportunity for improvement and patient impact.

Data on each measure was collected through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Information from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, available to all hospitals to complete, also affects grades.

Currently, Leapfrog does not assign grades to military or Veterans Administration hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children’s hospitals or outpatient surgery centers.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.

The full methodology for the 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is available online.

Findings from the fall 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

• Thirty-two percent of hospitals received an "A” grade; 26 percent received a "B," 35 percent received a "C," 7 percent received a "D," and less than 1 percent received an "F.”

• The five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals are Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho, Massachusetts and Colorado.

• There were no "A" hospitals in Delaware, Washington, D.C. and North Dakota.

Six UCHealth hospitals were included among Colorado's lower grades in the report, and the health care system issued the following information in response:

UCHealth is focused on quality and excellence, and we participate in several national quality programs and databases to compare our results against thousands of other hospitals. Those programs show that our quality ranks among the best in the nation with excellent patient outcomes.
We have chosen to focus our resources, including the time of our quality department staff, on several quality programs including Vizient, IBM Watson, CMS and U.S. News and World Report. Leapfrog does not help us understand our performance in way that helps drive quality improvements for our patients.

Leapfrog invites hospitals to submit data which is often unverified, and their data collection process is cumbersome and requires a significant amount of time. For hospitals that choose not to participate, Leapfrog may pull data from other sources, often resulting in incorrect or older data being compared against the unverified data self-reported from other hospitals. In addition, hospitals that do not participate in the survey don’t even have the opportunity to achieve all the points – and therefore are scored lower than others.

Our analysis shows that UCHealth hospitals’ letter grades would be at least one or two grades higher if we fully participated in the Leapfrog survey.

Here are a few specific examples of the inaccuracies in the Leapfrog grades:

· Many of our hospitals received a poor grade on “Doctors order medications through a computer”, but that’s completely inaccurate. Our doctors absolutely order medications through a computer, and our IT infrastructure has even been recognized nationally as one of health care’s most advanced.
· We also get a poor grade on the safe medication administration – barcoding category. This says safer hospitals use bar coding technology effectively for all orders. But UCHealth hospitals absolutely use bar codes on our medications, which are matched to the bar codes on patients’ wristbands. – and in fact, we even go beyond that and use hi-tech Alaris IV pumps that are wirelessly connected to the patient’s electronic medical record, medication and the patient. This innovative technology confirms the medication, IV drip volume/time, patient, and then confirms that everything matches the physician’s original prescription.
· ICU staffing – Specially trained doctors care for ICU patients. This is another area that Leapfrog is reporting inaccurately. Our hospitals do have specially trained critical care specialists, intensivists and hospitalists caring for patients in our ICUs, yet Leapfrog gives us poor scores in this area.

Unfortunately, Leapfrog shares incorrect information with the public, their comparisons are at best apples to oranges, and this could potentially confuse patients.

A University of Michigan study looked at Leapfrog’s methodology and found that its grades skews “toward positive self-report and bear little association with compulsory Medicare outcomes and penalties. With increasing compulsory reporting, Leapfrog (Safe Practices Score) seems limited for comparing hospital performance." Here’s a some in-depth info on that independent study: Honesty may not be the best policy for hospital safety grades, study suggests.