November 27, 2019
Health is a priority on everyone’s list. Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit, released this year’s grade of hospitals across the state. They issue rankings based on how hospitals protect patients from injuries, infections or other errors. In North Dakota, they took a look at CHI St. Alexius, Sanford Health and Trinity Health.
CHI St. Alexius received a ‘B’ grading, the highest in the region.
“This has been very exciting for our team here. It does take a team. It’s not any one person or one service line. It’s all of us together. And we strive to be even better. We hope to reach A,” said Dr. Lisa Laurent, the Chief Medical Officer at CHI St. Alexius.
According to Laurent, they have scored B’s for the past few years, but the percentage of their score continues to rise each year.
But not everyone scored as high. Sanford Health received a D and Trinity Health was given a C. However, in a statement, Sanford said they choose to not participate in the Leapfrog survey.
“Many health care systems, including Sanford, choose to not participate in the Leapfrog survey. Sanford is focused on quality and safety. We regularly meet and exceed our own standards that are equal to or stronger than national benchmarks,” said Jeremy Cauwels, M.D., Senior vice president of quality for Sanford Health.
Unlike Sanford, Trinity Health did decide to voluntarily participate in the Leapfrog survey.
“Hospitals that voluntarily submit their data to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey are to be commended for their commitment to transparency and educating their patients about the quality and safety of the care they provide - Trinity Health is one of two ND healthcare systems that voluntarily and transparently reports data to Leapfrog. Our goal is to achieve its highest scores on patient safety and quality of care. We are pleased with the efforts of our medical staff and caregivers which have resulted in consistently increasing quality and patient safety scores.
With the lag in CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid) reporting, some of these results are not factored into the current rating. We use Leapfrog metrics and other standards to improve our processes. This has improved our documentation of care and we confidently expect our results to continue to rise given our solid progress on these initiatives,” said Randy Schwan, Vice President, Mission Integration of Trinity Health.
KXNet
Nikiya Carrero Reporting