New York Hospital Gets Low Marks for Patient Safety

Despite being well-known, hospitals like New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic, scored poorly on patient safety in a recent analysis. The hospitals, however, are questioning the validity of the report. The analysis was conducted by the Leapfrog group, a group focused on health-care quality formed by large employers over ten years ago. Patient safety experts from institutions such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard scored 2,600 hospitals nationwide on an A through F scale. The scores were based on factors such as medication errors, preventable infections, bedsores and other potentially fatal yet preventable medical mistakes. Hospitals that received C grades included: New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic. Mount Sinai officials questioned the group’s methodology. In a statement provided to the Wall Street Journal they explained, “It is an incomplete and imperfect snapshot, and much of the analysis is based on outdated information from disparate sources.” The statement continued, “Leapfrog’s analysis is simply not indicative of the quality of care patients receive at Mount Sinai.” Some hospitals also questioned whether their low grades stemmed from electing not to participate in Leapfrog’s surveys, but Leapfrog maintains that declining to participate in their surveys had no bearing on the grades hospitals received. The board of Leapfrog says they have been very frustrated with the lack of improvement in patient safety despite major efforts by hospitals over the past ten years. Source: The Wall Street Journal, “Big Hospitals Get- and Dispute- Patient Safety Grades from Leapfrog,” Laura Landro, June 7, 2012.