Virginia Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And The Worst

VIRGINIA — Several Virginia 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 Virginia:

• 33 hospitals received an A grade.
• 18 hospitals received a B grade.
• 13 hospitals received a C grade.
• 2 hospitals received a D grade.

Many of the leading hospitals in Northern Virginia received an A grade, including all the Inova hospitals, along with the Novant Health UVA Health System hospitals in Manassas and Haymarket. Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington and Reston Hospital Center also received A grades.

Christopher Chiantella, chief medical officer at Inova Loudoun Hospital, which received an A grade, said in a statement that "feedback received in our regular safety culture surveys guides our strategies to reduce patient harm."

"This awareness accompanied by accountability, ongoing education and performance improvement intervention across all teams, prepared us for the challenges of the pandemic," Chiantella said.

Hospitals in other parts of the region did not grade as well in safety performance in Leapfrog's spring safety grades. Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center in Woodbridge and Stafford Hospital each received C grades.

Mary Washington Hospital, for example, did not score well on the safety of patients who get surgery at the hospital.

Leapfrog noted that hospitals with a better safety record than Mary Washington Hospital follow "a strict procedure to count sponges and tools in the operating room. The hospital may use an electronic scanning system where each object is scanned before and after surgery to ensure they haven’t left any objects inside the patient."

Two Centra hospitals in Lynchburg — Centra Lynchburg General Hospital and Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital — received D grades, the only hospitals in the state to receive a D. No hospitals in the state received an F. The hospitals scored poorly in almost every category, including infections and surgery safety.

Patch contacted Mary Washington Hospital and Centra for comment on the safety grades but had not received a response when this article was published.

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."
• Virginia was among five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals along with Massachusetts, Idaho, Maine 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.

RELATED: 12 Virginia Hospitals Ranked Among 2021's Best