New Silver Spring Hospital Safety Grades: Two Get 'C' Grade

SILVER SPRING, MD — Several hospitals in Montgomery County received top marks in the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group.

Two in Silver Spring were graded, earning Cs.

"Holy Cross Health is proud of the high-quality care we provide our patients at our hospitals and throughout our health system every day. We appreciate the Leapfrog ratings, and while the new scores are not where we would prefer to be, we value the opportunity to receive and respond to the survey findings. Further, we value all our rankings, including those from Healthgrades, where Holy Cross Hospital was recently named one of America’s 100 Best HospitalsTM and by U.S. News & World Report, who ranked the hospital one of the top 10 in the Washington, D.C., metro region. We are equally proud of the awards and designations given to Holy Cross Germantown Hospital, including the Get with the Guidelines®- Stroke Gold Plus Achievement AwardTM from the American Heart Association."

"At Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center, we are dedicated to providing high-quality healthcare to every patient. We value Leapfrog and other healthcare rating systems and are continuously working toward improvement," the center said in a statement to Patch. "This month, White Oak Medical Center was recognized with the highest-possible quality rating for heart surgery by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), placing the hospital among the best hospitals in heart surgery. Historically, 4-8% of hospitals earn a three-star rating. Our hospital has also attained recent recognitions for high-quality heart and stroke care from the American Heart Association and is an American College of Cardiology Accredited Chest Pain Center."

The latest ratings reflect care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Leapfrog Group said its and other groups’ research showed the pandemic reversed years of progress in patient safety.

The pandemic has had a negative effect on “health care delivery at every level and setting, from staffing shortages to increased infections to the very care patients receive,” according to the Patient Experience During the Pandemic: Adult Inpatient Care report, also released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group.

“The health care workforce has faced unprecedented levels of pressure during the pandemic, and as a result, patients' experience with their care appears to have suffered,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “We commend the workforce for their heroic efforts these past few years and now strongly urge hospital leadership to recommit to improved care — from communication to responsiveness — and get back on track with patient safety outcomes.”

In Montgomery County, 0 hospitals received an "A" grade, three hospitals received a "B" grade and three hospitals received a "C" grade. No hospitals in Montgomery County earned a D or F.
Here are the rankings, according to Leapfrog:

B

• MedStar Montgomery Medical Center
• Suburban Hospital
• Holy Cross Germantown Hospital

C

• Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center
• Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center
• Holy Cross Hospital

The letter grades assigned to nearly 3,000 U.S general hospitals were based on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

Included in the 30 are five that research has shown to directly affect patient outcomes, but can be improved with greater communication between caregivers and patients — the number of central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, infections from colon surgery, MRSA (Staphylococcus) blood laboratory-identified events, and facility-wide inpatient diarrhea events.

When there’s communication about medications, for example, that can lead to fewer hospitalizations for conditions such as sepsis and blood clots, fewer complications, and decreases in the incidence of respiratory failure, Leapfrog said.

Among the findings:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an “A,” 24 percent received a “B,” 36 percent received a “C,” 7 percent received a “D.” and fewer than 1 percent received an “F”.
• The states with the highest percentages of “A” hospitals are North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Colorado and Michigan.
• There were no “A” hospitals in Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota or the District of Columbia.

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 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is available online.

This story has been updated to include comment from Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center.