VA Hospital Safety Ratings: Inova Loudoun Honored Again

LEESBURG, VA — Inova Loudoun Hospital earned its 23rd consecutive "A" grade this week, according to the spring 2023 hospital safety grades released by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog.

The Leapfrog Group uses 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 Virginia, 27 hospitals received an A grade, 28 hospitals received a B, and 14 hospitals received a C. No hospitals in Virginia received a D grade or an F. Last fall, one hospital received a D grade.

All five Inova hospitals received A's in the Spring 2023 report.

“Excellence in healthcare is not a one-time achievement, but a habit of continuously striving to live our values of putting the patient at the center of everything we do,” Inova's chief quality and safety officer Chapy Venkatesan said in a news release. “Receiving straight A grades from the Leapfrog Group year after year is a testament to our unwavering commitment to provide the safest, highest quality of care.”

High rates of three health care-associated infections, or HAIs, “should stop hospitals in their tracks,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a news release, noting that “infections like these can be life for death for some patients.”

“We recognize the tremendous strain the pandemic put on hospitals and their workforce, but alarming findings like these indicate hospitals must recommit to patient safety and build more resilience,” Binder said.

The problematic infections are Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA; central line-associated bloodstream infections, or CLABSI; and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, or CAUTI. When compared to rankings that covered the period immediately before the COVID-19 outbreak, the analysis found an increased infection ratio for all three infections. The spring 2023 rankings cover late 2021 and 2022.

However, another such infection, Clostridioides difficile, or C.Diff, improved and there was no significant change for surgical site infections post surgery, the report said. The standardized infection ratio used to measure changes in the rates of infections compares the actual number of reported infections to the predicted number at each hospital.

“Not only are HAIs among the leading causes of death in the U.S., they also increase length of hospitalization stays and add to costs,” Binder said. “Our pre-pandemic data showed improved HAI measures, but the spring 2023 Safety Grade data spotlights how hospital responses to the pandemic led to a decline in patient safety and HAI management.”

Patient experience measures included communication with nurses and doctors, staff responsiveness, and communication about medicine and discharge information. Nationally, the average of all five measures declined when compared to pre-pandemic measures, according to the report.

"We find with these newest Hospital Safety Grades that patient safety has suffered major setbacks nationally during the pandemic. But that’s not the case at Inova, all of which have earned straight ‘A’ grades for more than a decade,” Binder said." “That is an extraordinary accomplishment, particularly now, and shows a relentless determination to put patients first no matter what the circumstances. My congratulations for inspiring all Americans with your leadership against all the odds."