7th A Grade In A Row For Morristown Medical Center

MORRISTOWN, NJ — For the seventh time in a row, Morristown Medical Center earned an A rating from health safety grading group Leapfrog.

Grades are given out twice a year, once in the spring and the fall. Morristown Medical Center has earned the highest marks for three straight years now. Their most recent non-A grade happened in the spring of 2015, when they earned a B.

“Atlantic Health System is dedicated to providing the highest quality care and service when members of our communities walk through our doors,” said Amy Perry, CEO Hospital Division, Senior Vice President, Integrated Care Delivery, Atlantic Health System. “These prestigious grades reflect the tireless commitment of our caregivers to the safety of the patients and families who trust us with their care.”

The hospital earned its mark for having very low rates of infections, low surgical error rates, and having enough qualified staff. Some things the hospital received negative feedback on was communicating discharge information to patients and accidental cuts and tears during surgeries (you can see the full breakdown here).

Morristown Medical Center was one of 38 hospitals in the state to receive this grade. Other top-ranking Morris County hospitals include Chilton Medical Center, and Saint Clare's Dover and Denville.

Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades. The goal of the rankings is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 27 measures that are taken together to produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The group uses performance measures from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The grades released on Tuesday showed that five states — Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho — showed significant improvement since the safety grades were first implemented in 2012.

Image via Morristown Medical Center