Arizona Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And The Worst

ARIZONA — Several Arizona hospitals received top safety marks while others didn’t quite measure up in The Leapfrog Group’s annual spring safety grades released Thursday.

The nonprofit health care watchdog group grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from “A” to “F” based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

More than 2,700 general, acute-care U.S. hospitals were assessed for Leapfrog’s Spring Safety Grades. Among those hospitals, 27 have achieved 19 consecutive “A” grades in every biannual grading cycle since Leapfrog launched the safety grades in spring 2012.

In Arizona:

• 15 hospitals received an A grade.
• 13 hospitals received a B grade.
• 14 hospitals received a C grade.
• 4 hospitals received a D grade.
• 0 hospitals received an F grade.

The 15 A grade hospitals were Phoenix's Mayo Clinic, Glendale's Abrazo Arrowhead Campus, Sun City Banner Boswell Medical Center, Casa Grande Banner Medical Center, Queen Creek Banner Ironwood Medical Center, Tucson Carondelet St. Joseph's Hospital, Tucson Carondelet St. Mary's Hospital, Phoenix Deer Valley Medical Center, Kingman Regional Medical Center, Tucson Northwest Medical Center, Oro Valley Hospital, Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center, Scottsdale Shea Medical Center, Scottsdale Thompson Peak Hospital and Cottonwood Verde Valley Medical Center.

On the flip side, the four D grade hospitals were Tempe St. Luke's Hospital, Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, Fort Mohave Medical Center and Phoenix Valleywise Health.

Valleywise Health responded to Leapfrog's grade, telling Patch:

"We are disappointed in the new Leapfrog Hospital Ratings. In reviewing the Leapfrog data, we find that ratings related to clinical care quality at Valleywise Health Medical Center are consistent with previous years and show no decline. However, the ratings related to the patient experience declined during 2020 and negatively impacted our overall rating.

We believe this is mainly related to two challenges we faced during 2020: 1. Our medical center is an aging facility with no private rooms. Fortunately, it will be replaced in two years with a new medical center. But construction of the new facility, which is adjacent to our current medical center, has involved ongoing noise, parking challenges and access challenges, all of which can contribute negatively to the patient experience. 2. During much of 2020, we frequently moved patients to accommodate temporary ICUs that were created to care for increasing numbers of extremely ill Covid 19 patients. Movement of patients during their hospital stays commonly creates patient experience challenges."

Valley View Medical Center, which operates Fort Mohave Medical Center, responded by telling Patch:

"Valley View Medical Center is committed to ongoing quality improvement efforts so that we can continue to provide the best possible care to patients, families and visitors and ensure that everyone has a positive experience at our hospital. We value the information that public reports and ranking systems provide; it adds to how we regularly monitor our progress and helps us explore opportunities to continuously improve the care we provide.

Currently, there are a number of public reporting systems, including the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, which evaluate hospital performance. These systems use different quality measures, performance data and methodologies to calculate scores. As a result, a hospital may perform well on one report card and poorly on another.

Because of these variations, the Hospital Safety Grade, as with any public reporting system, must be appropriately interpreted. For example, some of the data used to calculate hospital grades is outdated, and does not reflect more recent performance improvement efforts. Grades can also be calculated based on the availability, or lack thereof, of specific service lines at the hospital.

It is our privilege to serve the healthcare needs of our community, and we will continue monitoring our progress and exploring opportunities to ensure all patients have access to high-quality care close to home."

It’s worth noting the hospitals were graded during a time of extraordinary pressure on the health care system due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“This pandemic emphasized how much we rely on America’s health care workforce,” Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “Our straight ‘A’ hospitals remind us how preparedness protected their patients as well as their workforce and created a high level of organizational resilience.”

Across all states, highlights of findings from the spring 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an "A," 24 percent received a "B," 35 percent received a "C," 7 percent received a "D," and less than 1 percent received an "F."
• Five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals are Massachusetts, Idaho, Maine, Virginia, and North Carolina.
• There were no "A" hospitals in South Dakota or North Dakota.

To determine each state’s grade, Leapfrog used up to 28 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. When averaged, performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries.

Leapfrog estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at "A" hospitals, 50,000 lives at other facilities would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is peer-reviewed by a panel of national experts, and the Leapfrog Group receives guidance from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.

Patch has reached out to Tempe St. Luke's Hospital, Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation for comment and will update this story when we get a reply.