Lowell General Hospital Gets 'B' Safety Grade

LOWELL, MA — Lowell General Hospital was one of 14 Massachusetts hospitals to receive a "B" safety grade 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.

Lowell General received a B grade for spring 2021 after earning an A in fall 2020.

The hospital received perfect scores in some categories, including:

• Dangerous object left in patient’s body
• Air or gas bubble in the blood
• MRSA Infection
• Specially trained doctors care for ICU patients
• Staff work together to prevent errors

But the hospital scored below average in categories including:

• Infection in the blood
• Death from treatable serious complications
• Serious breathing problem
• Communication about medicines
• Dangerous bed sores

Patch has reached out to Lowell General for comment on the grade and will update this story when we hear back.

More than 2,700 general, acute-care U.S. hospitals were assessed for Leapfrog's Spring Safety Grades. In Massachusetts:

• 34 hospitals received an A grade.
• 14 hospitals received a B grade.
• 10 hospitals received a C grade.
• 0 hospitals received a D grade.
• 0 hospitals received an F grade.

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.