The Safest Hospitals In Oregon: New Rankings Released

PORTLAND, OR — Several hospitals in Oregon received top marks, but others didn’t quite measure up in the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group.

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 Oregon, 16 hospitals received an "A" grade, 9 hospitals received a "B" grade, 7 hospitals received a "C" grade and 1 hospital received a "D" grade.

Here are the rankings, according to Leapfrog:

A

• Asante Ashland Community Hospital
• Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center
• Asante Three Rivers Medical Center
• Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center
• Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center
• Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center
• Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center
• PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend
• PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center University District
• Providence Medford Medical Center
• Providence Milwaukie Hospital
• Providence Portland Medical Center
• Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
• Santiam Hospital
• St. Charles Health System-Bend
• Willamette Valley Medical Center

B

• CHI Mercy Health Mercy Medical Center
• Legacy Emanuel Medical Center
• Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center
• Legacy Silverton Medical Center
• McKenzie - Willamette Medical Center
• Providence Newberg Medical Center
• Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center
• Saint Alphonsus Medical Center - Ontario
• St. Charles Health System - Redmond

C

• Adventist Health Portland Medical Center
• Bay Area Hospital
• OHSU - Marquam Hill Campus
• OHSU Health Hillsboro Medical Center
• Salem Hospital
• Samaritan Albany General Hospital
• Sky Lakes Medical Center

D

• Mid-Columbia Medical Center

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.

Not everyone agrees with Leapfrog's methodology.

A spokesman for OHSU, which got a "C" from Leapfrog, said that the hospital doesn't participate in the survey.

"OHSU has elected not to participate in Leapfrog, which bases its hospitals 'grade' solely on the raw number of specific conditions within a hospital with no adjustment for the complexity or severity of patients' conditions," OHSU spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley said.

Hargens-Bradley said that OHSU and other major trauma centers and regional referral centers by their nature tend to get the sickest patients and the highest number of patients with the highest level of complications.

She pointed out that using raw data "is unfortunate and misleading" and that Leapfrog "chooses to translate such data into a quality grade" deprives patients of a more complete picture.

Hargens-Bradley pointed to other ranking systems "that more accurately capture differences in the severity and complexity of a given hospital's patient population" including: CMS Quality Ranking, Vizient, U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals 2021-2022 and U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospitals 2021-2022.

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.