Sonoma County Hospital Safety Grades: Spring 2021

SONOMA COUNTY, CA — Some North Bay 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.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries. Each hospital a score across five categories: Infections, Problems With Surgery, Practices to Prevent Errors, Safety Problems, and Doctors, Nurses & Hospital Staff. 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.

Here in Sonoma County:

• Sonoma Valley Hospital received a C grade.
• Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital received a C grade.
• Kaiser Foundation Hospital Santa Rosa received an A grade.
• Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital received an A grade.
• Petaluma Valley Hospital received a C grade.

In response to the grades, Providence, which operates Petaluma Valley Hospital, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and Queen of the Valley Medical Center, sent the following comments to Patch:

"Providing safe, high-quality care to our community remains our top priority and we appreciate any metrics that help us improve our care," said Frank Beirne, Northern California regional chief operating officer for Providence.

"While we fully support Leapfrog’s efforts to provide comparative information to the public, it is important to note that private reporting agencies like Leapfrog each have their own proprietary scoring methodologies, which can make reporting and results interpretation difficult and complex," Beirne said.

"The methodology Leapfrog uses to score hospitals does not fully align with the depth and richness of our quality processes. As a result, Providence Northern California (Queen of the Valley Medical Center, Petaluma Valley Hospital and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital) chose to discontinue participation in the Leapfrog Group’s reporting platform in 2019 and have not actively participated in this program since that time.

"We continue to perform rigorous internal reviews of our quality and safety on a regular basis and report our data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), which has consistently ranked our hospitals at or above average for quality.

"Additional recognitions that demonstrate our high-quality care include:

Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
— CMS 5-Star Rating for Overall Hospital Quality: With this jump from four to five stars, Santa Rosa Memorial joins an elite group of just over 13 percent of U.S. hospitals to earn this top CMS rating.
—Healthgrades: Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital received an America's 250 Best Hospitals Award for 2021, placing it in the top 5 percent in the nation for consistently delivering clinical quality.
— American Heart Association 2020 Get With The Guidelines® Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award

Petaluma Valley Hospital
—California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS): Maternity Honor Roll
— American Heart Association 2020 Get With The Guidelines Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award. In addition, Petaluma Valley Hospital achieved the Type 2 Diabetes Target Honor Roll.
— Healthgrades: 2021 Stroke Care Excellence Award™ Named Among the Top 10% in the Nation for Treatment of Stroke in 2021; and a Five Star Recipient for Treatment of Stroke for 2 Years in a Row."

Queen of the Valley Medical Center

— Healthgrades: Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa was ranked among America's 250 Best Hospitals Award for 2021, 2020 and 2019, placing it in the top 5 percent in the nation for consistently delivering clinical quality. The hospital was recognized by Healthgrades for five awards including as a Five-Star Recipient for Treatment of Sepsis for 4 Years in a Row (2018-2021) and one of Healthgrades America's 100 Best Hospitals for Critical Care™ for 2 Years in a Row (2020-2021).

— Joint Commission: Recognized as a Primary Stroke Center and a Certified Joint Program.

— U.S. News & World Report High Performer for Congestive Heart Failure, Knee Replacement in 2019."

We also reached out Friday to Sonoma Valley Hospital but have not yet heard back.

Healdsburg Hospital was not included in the report but here are the Spring 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades for some other North Bay and East Bay hospitals:

• Adventist Health St. Helena received a C grade.
• Queen of the Valley Medical Center received a C grade.
• Kaiser Permanente Vacaville Medical Center received an A grade.
• NorthBay VacaValley Hospital received a C grade.
• NorthBay Medical Center received a B grade.
• Sutter Davis Hospital received a C grade.
• Sutter Solano Medical Center received a C grade.
• Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center received an A grade.
• Woodland Memorial Hospital received a B grade.
• Novato Community Hospital received a C grade.
• Contra Costa Regional Medical Center received a B grade.
• Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center received an A grade.
• John Muir Medical Center Concord Campus received a B grade.

Among all California hospitals, 271 received an A grade.

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.

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 U.S. 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.

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.