Hospital care in Sarasota-Manatee area ranked No. 2 in Florida in latest Leapfrog rankings
Leapfrog Group ranked the quality of healthcare available in the North Port, Sarasota, Bradenton metro area in a tie for both second in the state and 13th in the country based on the percentage of A-rated hospitals in its spring 2024 hospital rankings.
The metro area ratings, released as part of the Leapfrog grades for the first time on May 1, were based on the grades of four hospitals in Sarasota County and three in Manatee County.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s Venice campus made its debut with an “A” grade, joining SMH Sarasota, HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital and HCA Florida Englewood Hospital as A-rated facilities in the region.
The entire Leapfrog Group assessment is available online at https://www.hospitalsafetygrade.org.
Leapfrog Group has released grades every fall and spring since 2012. HCA Florida Englewood has received an A grade for 24 straight periods. Sarasota Memorial started participating in 2016 and has received “A” grades ever since, while HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital continued a streak of four straight “A” grades.
In Manatee County, HCA Florida Blake Hospital and Lakewood Ranch Medical Center earned “B” grades, while Manatee Memorial Hospital earned a “C” grade.
As a result, 57.1% of area hospitals earned “A” grades – tied with Jacksonville and the Harrisburg-Carlisle MSA in Pennsylvania.
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The Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area was the top-rated area in Florida and ninth in the country, with 61.9% of the hospitals earning “A” grades.
HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital, ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte and Shore Point Health Punta Gorda are not in the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton metro area but are used by many people in North Port and south Sarasota County. All three hospitals earned “C” grades from Leapfrog.
Why rank metropolitan areas?
“It was time for us to look at metro areas, to give people a sense of how their community is doing,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, told the Herald-Tribune.
"It’s also about your community,” she added. “You’re not looking at one hospital, you're looking at how these hospitals fit together in one environment and give your community what they need.”
With that in mind, she stressed that where a community appears in the rankings isn’t as important as the number of “A” ranked hospitals, as well as the grades of other area hospitals.
“Those are for human lives,” Binder said. “Those grades are directly linked to your dying of a preventable error in that hospital.”
Leapfrog assigns letter grades to nearly 3,000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, infections, and injuries.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital results
“The consistently high safety ratings our hospitals receive from the Leapfrog Group, along with many other quality awards SMH receives each year, is a reflection of the dedication and exceptional service our team provides every day,” Sarah Lodge, chair of the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board, said in a prepared statement.
In the same statement, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System CEO David Verinder commended the SMH-Sarasota team for its continued “A” streak and the SMH-Venice staff for earning their first “A.”
“Despite a tight labor market, supply shortages and the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian, SMH physicians and staff continue to demonstrate their resiliency and resourcefulness and a deep commitment to providing safe, high-quality care to our entire community,” Verinder said.
Hospitals must be open two years for Leapfrog to start assigning safety grades, which is why SMH-Venice is just now being graded after opening in November 2021. The 110-bed hospital has been operating at or near capacity ever since.
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System has been working to almost double the Venice facility's capacity to 212 beds.
Two upper floors of a new Northeast Tower opened in April, adding 68 private patient suites, and another patient care floor with 34 additional private suites is scheduled to open later this year.
Sharon Roush, president of the SMH-Venice campus expressed pride in staff performance and the quality of care provided.
“They have adapted to meet every challenge that came our way, including caring for thousands of patients impacted by the permanent closure of the ShorePoint Health Venice Hospital in the summer of 2022 and temporary closure of south Florida hospitals following Hurricane Ian,” Rouse said in a prepared statement.
HCA Florida hospitals pull back from survey system
Officials at HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital and HCA Florida Englewood Hospital were less effusive about the “A” grades than in years past because of a corporate decision by parent company, Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare – the country’s largest private hospital company – to not participate in Leapfrog Hospital Survey for the spring.
That decision did not factor into the nonprofit’s ability to grade any of its 186 hospitals.
A corporate statement released by both hospitals read: “Leapfrog continues to move away from evidence-based metrics and we believe outcomes are the best measure of quality. HCA Healthcare has therefore paused our participation in Leapfrog.”
Both hospitals pointed to recent accolades through Healthgrades, another leading online resource for people seeking health care options.
Both hospitals also recently received their third consecutive Patient Safety Excellence Award.
Healthgrades ranks roughly 4,500 hospitals nationally, based on evaluation of clinical outcomes, risk-adjusted mortality and complications, based on the assessment of 35 common conditions.
Binder said she was puzzled by the HCA corporate statement and disappointed that the company has declined to cooperate, though that is not a criteria for rankings.
“There is one side of it that isn't so puzzling,” Binder said. “They did make a decision not to provide Leapfrog with data on certain measures we think are important they apparently don’t think are so important, such as medication errors.
“Medication errors are the number one most common error made in hospitals.”
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Binder later added that HCA – which is publicly traded under HCA on the New York Stock Exchange – has traditionally been known for being more transparent than other hospital systems.
“Hopefully they will change course, because people deserve to know how their hospitals are doing,” she said.
A biannual report card
Two times a year, the nonprofit Leapfrog Group scores hospitals on how well they keep patients safe from medical errors, infections, accidents and other harm to patients in their care.
It gives A, B, C, D, or F letter grades to hospitals across the country on more than 30 different performance measures, including rates of injuries, accidents, infections and systems hospitals have in place to prevent harm and medical errors.
This year, nearly 29% of the hospitals received a A, 26% received a B, 37% received a C, 7% received a D. Less than 1% received an F.
Hospital safety grades dipped during the COVID-19 pandemic and have started improving earlier this year. Nationwide, scores on all 30 measures have improved since the fall 2023 grades, with 92% of hospitals improving at least one of three dangerous preventable infections.
Hospital acquired infections have declined 34% in central line-associated bloodstream infections and 30% in catheter-associated urinary tract infections while incidents of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, have decreased by 30%.
Binder expressed sympathy and gratitude to hospitals and staff for persevering through the COVID-19 pandemic but added that hospitals must do better at maintaining patient safety standards.
“But that said, hospitals need to learn to manage both public health emergencies and the ongoing day-to-day business of keeping their patients safe,” she said, especially if another pandemic would occur. “We can’t give them the complete excuse that it’s hard.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: See how Sarasota-Manatee did in Leapfrog metro hospital care rankings
