Inova Alexandria, Mount Vernon Earn 'A' Grade For Patient Care: Report

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Inova Alexandria Hospital and Inova Mount Vernon Hospital were among several Northern Virginia hospitals to receive high marks 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.

“Even during the stress of the pandemic, we have worked tirelessly to provide safe, high-reliability healthcare to each patient we have the privilege to serve," said Dr. J. Stephen Jones, president and CEO of Inova Health System. "This recognition from Leapfrog is a reflection of our ongoing commitment to putting patient safety at the center of everything we do, and I am incredibly proud of this achievement."

The Leapfrog Group's ratings assign A, B, C, D or F grades to hospitals based on more than 30 patient safety measures. 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.

All five Inova hospitals in Northern Virginia received an A grade. Inova Mount Vernon has received 16 consecutive A grades since 2014, while Inova Alexandria Hospital had eight consecutive A grades since 2018. Other Northern Virginia hospitals with an A grade are Reston Hospital Center in Reston, StoneSprings Hospital Center in Dulles and Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington.

Included in the 30 patient safety measures 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 are:

• 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.