2 WilCo St. David’s HealthCare Sites Get 'A' Grade

AUSTIN, TX — All eligible St. David’s HealthCare facilities — including two in Williamson County — were recently awarded an “A” from The Leapfrog Group’s Fall 2020 Hospital Safety Grades, officials recently announced.

The designation recognizes the hospitals’ efforts to protect patients from harm and provide safer healthcare, officials explained. St. David’s HealthCare is the only hospital system to receive an “A” for all eligible facilities in the Austin area, hospital officials added.

The Leapfrog Group is an independent, national nonprofit organization committed to improving healthcare quality and safety for patients. The Hospital Safety Grade assigns a letter grade to hospitals across the country every six months based on their performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents and infections among patients in their care.

St. David’s Medical Center, St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center and St. David’s Georgetown Hospital all received an “A” rating, according to an advisory. St. David’s Medical Center is one of only two hospitals in the state to receive straight “A” ratings since The Leapfrog Group launched the Hospital Safety ScoreSM initiative (now known as Hospital Safety Grades) in 2012, officials added.

Heart Hospital of Austin and St. David’s Surgical Hospital were not included in the study completed by The Leapfrog Group because the facilities are considered specialty hospitals, officials noted.

“This year, we are incredibly grateful for the doctors, nurses and staff who safely provided exceptional patient care to the Central Texas community during a global pandemic,” Ken Mitchell, chief medical officer of St. David’s HealthCare, said in a prepared statement. “This recognition belongs to our frontline workers who continue to treat each patient with warmth and compassion every day.”

Developed under the guidance of a national expert panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.

For more information about the Hospital Safety Grades, visit HospitalSafetyGrade.org.