CentraState In Freehold Again Graded 'C' In Hospital Safety Study

FREEHOLD, NJ — CentraState Medical Center, which scored a "C" ranking of hospitals in a report by the health care watchdog The Leapfrog Group, says it is making strides in the areas cited and expects improvement in the future.

Several New Jersey hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

CentraState is in partnership with the Atlantic Health System. The hospital also received a "C" rating in the spring Leapfrog report.

But CentraState said it has been taking measures that should result in an improved score in the future. Details of the Leapfrog report on CentraState can be found here.

"We believe it is important for consumers to have transparent information about safety and quality data, and appreciate the efforts of Leapfrog to improve the usefulness and accessibility of information to consumers," said Tom Scott, CentraState president and CEO.

He said the Freehold Township hospital is considered a High Reliability Organization with Magnet status for nursing excellence.

As such, it "performs continuous, rigorous reviews of quality and safety measures to ensure that physicians, nurses and staff deliver outstanding care to all patients."

Scott said current Leapfrog grades reflect data from 2018 and 2019, where the most weighted section of the survey included pressure injuries.

"Since then, we have employed several clinical protocols regarding that measure that have shown great improvement, that we anticipate will be reflected in future grades once the older data cycles off," Scott said in a news statement.

The report reviews five areas of accountability and then breaks down each area into more specific issues. The five areas include infections; problems with surgery; safety problems; practices to prevent errors; and doctors, nurses and hospital staff.

In the area of infections, for example, the report breaks down the type of infection. It says CentraState scored well in MRSA, C. diff, blood and after surgery sepsis infections. But it fell short in urinary tract infections and surgical site infections after colon surgery.

More specifics on all five categories, again, can be accessed here.

Other hospitals in the area received an "A" rating from Leapfrog, including Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank and Bayshore Medical Center in Holmdel, both part of the Hackensack Meridian Health system. The Barnabas system's Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch also received an "A" rating.

Hackensack Meridian noted in a news release yesterday that it received the most "A" grades out of any health system in New Jersey with eight of its network hospitals in the state receiving that grade.

Apart from Bayshore and Riverview, the following Hackensack Meridian hospitals received “A” grades for spring 2022: Hackensack University Medical Center, Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, Old Bridge Medical Center, Palisades Medical Center, Pascack Valley Medical Center and Raritan Bay Medical Center.

“Hackensack Meridian Health prides itself on operating the safest hospitals in New Jersey,” said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, chief executive officer of Hackensack Meridian Health. “I am proud of our teams who understand and implement our patient-first practices with the precision and expertise required to ensure we surpass safety expectations at each level of care.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit healthcare watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide 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.

In New Jersey, 33 hospitals received an A, 20 hospitals received a B, 14 hospitals received a C and 3 hospitals received a D grade. Zero hospitals received an F.

Hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

Also, according to the report, progress on the number of patients treated for healthcare-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.