Pottstown Hospital Falls To 'D' Rating For Safety

POTTSTOWN, PA — Pottstown Hospital was one of just eight hospitals in all of Pennsylvania to receive a low "D" grade for patient safety from the Leapfrog Group.

The nonprofit group, which releases the safety ratings twice a year, found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, just 33 percent earned an "A" grade. None received an "F."

The hospital responded to the report, saying that the data is not all current, and that steps have been taken to improve safety under new owners, Tower Health.

"Tower Health supports public reporting of hospital quality and uses these reports to help focus our quality improvement efforts," a spokesperson for the hospital said. "It is important to note that the current Leapfrog grades for each of the five new Tower Health hospitals reflect, in some cases, data that is more than two years old and precedes the creation of Tower Health."

The Leapfrog Group, an independent watchdog organization, assigns grades of 'A' to 'F' to all general hospitals across the country based on their performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other harms to patients in their care.

Nearby, Phoenixville Hospital received a "C" grade.

"Recent improvements have included expanding the Epic electronic health record to these hospitals in August 2019," Tower added. "We continue to invest in facility and infrastructure improvements, have hired additional physicians, including specialists, and increased nurse staffing at these hospitals. Clinical and administrative teams work together throughout Tower Health to implement best practices that optimize patient outcomes. We are confident that our dedicated quality initiatives will further enhance the delivery of safe, high quality care at all Tower Health hospitals."

Leapfrog relies on a panel of experts to select the measures used in the methodology and to develop a scoring system. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

See the ratings for all Pennsylvania hospitals.