Several Columbia area hospitals get lower marks in latest safety grade report

Two hospitals in the Columbia metro area received the highest mark possible in the safety grades released by a medical watchdog group Wednesday. Most Midlands medical facilities received solid ratings, although there were more declines than improvements since the last scores were released in fall of 2023.

The newest biannual ranking shows that both Prisma Health Baptist Parkridge and Prisma Health Baptist can be considered among the safest in South Carolina. They retained their As from the fall ranking, while another hospital in that medical chain — Prisma Health Richland — had it’s grade improve in the latest ranking.

Since 2012, the Leapfrog Group has published Hospital Safety Scores twice a year — once in the spring and once during the fall — to create transparency in the U.S. health system. The rating is focused on “errors, accidents, injuries and infections.”

Based on this criteria, Columbia and Lexington hospitals received two A grades, two Bs and two Cs for the spring. Those include:

▪ Prisma Health Baptist Parkridge repeated its score from the fall ranking of A

▪ Prisma Health Baptist repeated its score from the fall ranking of A

▪ Lexington Medical Center’s grade dropped one letter from A in the fall ranking to B in the spring, marking the time since 2022 it hasn’t received the highest score

▪ Prisma Health Richland’s grade rose one letter from C in the fall ranking to B, the first time it has scored this high in at least three years

▪ MUSC Health Columbia Medical Center Northeast’s grade dropped two letters from A in the spring ranking to C. The facility was formerly Providence Health Northeast.

▪ MUSC Health Columbia Medical Center Downtown’s grade dropped one letter from B in the spring ranking to C. The hospital was formerly Providence Health.

Two other hospitals in the Midlands received an A, while another saw its score improve and another failed to get a grade.

▪ MUSC Health Kershaw Medical Center repeated its score from the fall ranking of A

▪ McCleod Health Clarendon in Manning’s grade rose one letter from B in the fall ranking to A

▪ Prisma Health Tuomey (in Sumter) repeated its score from the fall ranking of B

▪ Newberry County Memorial Hospital’s grade rose one letter from C in the fall ranking to B

▪ MUSC Health Orangeburg which received a grade of C in the fall ranking did not receive a grade in the spring because of missing data, Leapfrog said. The hospital, which was formerly Regional Medical Center of Orangeburg and Calhoun Counties, had received a grade in each of the previous six rankings.

Grading South Carolina

Overall in South Carolina, of the 50 hospitals that were ranked, 21 received a letter A. That’s a slight decrease from 22 in the fall rankings.

No hospitals in the Palmetto State received an F in the spring grades. But for the first time since the fall 2022 grading period a hospital in South Carolina — Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill — was issued a D grade.

The decline in hospital grades was reflected in South Carolina’s standing among other states. Nationally, South Carolina ranked 9th among all states, with 42% of its hospitals scoring an A rating. Again, that was a slight drop from the fall (43.1%), when the Palmetto State was ranked 5th in the nation.

The bigger picture

Utah (57.7%) remained the top-rated state in the U.S. There was a seven-way tie for lowest grade among North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming and Washington, D.C., as none had a hospital with an A grade.

This marked the first time that Leapfrog issued a ranking of the top metropolitan areas in the U.S. for hospital safety. The Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton PA-NJ area received the highest score in the nation at 72.7%. While the Columbia region did not post in the top 10, another area in South Carolina was recognized in the metro rankings, as Charleston-North Charleston ranked seventh in the U.S. with 62.5% of its hospitals meriting an A grade.

“Upwards of 200,000 people die every year from hospital errors, injuries, accidents, and infections,” the Leapfrog Group said. “It’s important to remember that most hospital errors can be prevented. Hospitals need to work hard every day to protect their patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections.”

Leapfrog said it graded about 3,000 hospitals nationwide this spring.

The grades are based on safety data and rate how hospitals have “checks in place to prevent mistakes, and ensure strong lines of communication between hospital staff, patients, and families,” according to Leapfrog.

“Patient experience is very difficult to influence without delivering better care, so these findings are encouraging,” Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder said on the group’s website. “We were also pleased to see the decrease in preventable infections, which cause terrible suffering and sometimes death. When we look at these positive trends, we see lives saved—and that is gratifying.”

Leapfrog said more than 500 people will die today because of a preventable hospital error, and every year 1-of-31 patients will develop a preventable infection while in the hospital.

“You should never refuse care in an emergency because of a hospital’s safety grade,” Leapfrog said. But talk with a doctor about the best hospital for planned, elective procedures.

However, Leapfrog’s study shows that patients at ‘D’ and ‘F’ hospitals face a greater risk of dying than those at hospitals graded A.

“We know ‘A’ hospitals do a better job at preventing errors,” Leapfrog said. “If your local hospital rates below an ‘A,’ talk with your doctor at that hospital and urge them to improve their safety.”

Making the grade

The Leapfrog Group said 22 measures are used to generate hospital safety grades, and it reports on five patient experience measures that have a direct impact on patient safety outcomes: nurse communication, doctor communication, staff responsiveness, communication about medicine and discharge information.

The Leapfrog safety grade is divided into two domains: Process/Structural Measures and Outcome Measures.

▪ Process Measures represent how often a hospital gives patients recommended treatment for a given medical condition or procedure. For example, “Responsiveness of hospital staff” looks at patients’ feedback on how long it takes for a staff member to respond when they request help. Structural Measures represent the environment in which patients receive care. For example, “Doctors order medications through a computer” represents whether a hospital uses a special computerized system to prevent errors when prescribing medications.

▪ Outcome Measures represent what happens to a patient while receiving care. For example, “Dangerous object left in patient’s body” measures how many times a patient undergoing surgery had a dangerous foreign object, like a sponge or tool, left in his or her body.

The Process Measures include:

▪ Computerized Physician Order Entry

▪ Bar Code Medication Administration

▪ ICU Physician Staffing

▪ Leadership Structures and Systems

▪ Culture Measurement, Feedback & Intervention

▪ Nursing Workforce

▪ Hand Hygiene

▪ Nurse Communication

▪ Doctor Communication

▪ Staff Responsiveness

▪ Communication about Medicines

▪ Discharge Information

The Outcome Measures include:

▪ Foreign Object Retained

▪ Air Embolism

▪ Falls and Trauma

▪ CLABSI

▪ CAUTI

▪ SSI: Colon

▪ MRSA

▪ C. Diff.

▪ Death Rate among Surgical Inpatients with Serious Treatable Conditions

▪ Patient safety and adverse events composite

SOURCE: Leapfrog Medical Group