Illinois hospitals’ safety rating drops again

The overall safety rating for Illinois hospitals has fallen again, this time to 28th in the nation, according to a new report, with one Chicago hospital receiving an F and more than half a dozen hospitals receiving a D.

According to the data, about 26.5% of Illinois hospitals received an A grade for safety new ratings from the nonprofit Leapfrog Group, which ranks hospitals nationwide twice a year. The percentage of hospitals receiving an A in Illinois has been slowly declining in recent years. Most recently spring 2021Illinois ranks 17th in the nation with 35% of hospitals receiving an A grade.

Ratings are important to hospitals as they attract patients and compete. Hospitals with high ratings often tout them in their advertisements, although experts advise patients to use ratings and scores as one tool when choosing where to get care.

Leapfrog’s ratings are based on more than 30 patient safety metrics obtained from the federal government, a Leapfrog survey, and other sources. Measures include falls and injuries, hand hygiene, and mortality rates among surgical patients with serious, treatable conditions.

In the grades released Wednesday, one Illinois hospital, South Shore Hospital on the city’s South Side, received an F. Seven Illinois hospitals received Ds, including Chicago’s Weiss Memorial and Roseland Community Hospitals, and Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and Vista. Medical Center East in Waukegan.

South Shore CEO Leslie Rogers said since taking over the hospital this summer, he has tried to focus on improving the hospital’s financial stability, its federal Medicare quality ratings and strengthening the hospital’s community involvement. The nonprofit hospital serves a predominantly black community, and many of its patients are on Medicare or Medicaid.

“We’re going to move on and try to get C or better next time,” Rogers said.

He said the hospital may not have scored well in certain categories on Leapfrog for a number of reasons, such as not having a doctor in its intensive care unit eight hours a day, five days a week, even though other medical staff are there all the time. He also said the hospital outperforms the national average in some areas tracked by the federal government. For example, South Shore’s percentage of patients receiving appropriate care for severe sepsis and/or septic shock is higher than the state and national averages, according to Medicare, even though Medicare rated the hospital one out of five stars overall for quality.

“A safety-focused patient culture is where we’re going,” Rogers said. “We will continue to work and strive for it.”

Meanwhile, some hospitals have criticized Leapfrog’s methodology.

“We strongly believe that meaningful quality and safety data should be made transparent to the public,” Advocate Aurora Health said in a statement in response to Advocate Christ’s D grade. “However, accurately measuring these data can be difficult, and some organizations use limited methodologies that do not always reflect the quality of care or the diverse factors that influence patient outcomes.”

Advocate Aurora said it has a “robust plan” to continue to improve safety and health outcomes.

For Vista Medical Center East, the D grade it received in this latest report is an improvement earlier this yearwhen it was the only hospital in the state to receive an F.

The hospital said in a statement that it is “continually focused on the safety, quality and experience of our patients,” while noting that “the data used to compile the current Vista Leapfrog score is, in some cases, more than three years old and does not reflect commitment and clinical performance doctors, nurses and Vista staff.”

Weiss Hospital received a D grade because of an increase in nosocomial infections during some reporting periods, Jane Brust, a spokeswoman for Weiss’ parent company Pipeline Health, said in a statement.

“Since then, we have improved our processes and expect future scores, particularly the fall, to reflect these improvements,” she said in a statement. “Patient safety is our highest priority, and our physicians and staff are fully committed to the quality of our patient care.”

Pipeline recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the midst of trying to sell Weiss and West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park.

Roseland Hospital did not respond to a request for comment on D’s grade.

While the percentage of Class A hospitals in Illinois fell, there were some bright spots in the report, even as hospitals across the state continued to struggle with the effects of the pandemic and staff shortages.

Three Illinois hospitals earned As grades for the 22nd consecutive year, an achievement of only 22 hospitals nationwide. These three Illinois hospitals are the University of Chicago Medical Center, Elmhurst Hospital, and Northwestern Medicine Central Hospital in Winfield.

The U. of C. Medical Center’s focus on safety is in part through the communication between frontline workers and leaders every morning, said Krista Kurrell, the hospital’s executive vice president and chief integration and transformation officer. Those conversations are a time to discuss performance, challenges and issues, she said.

Elmhurst Hospital scores highly because of its culture of safety, hospital leaders said. Every patient room at the hospital, which replaced an older facility in 2011, is identical, and items are stored in the same locations throughout the hospital, so “no matter where you go, you know where what is,” said hospital president Pamela Danley. All employees are trained in certain safety practices, including reporting when they see something wrong.

“We’ve empowered all staff to advocate for safety and know they’re part of the solution, and no matter what role they’re in, whether it’s housekeepers, nurses or doctors, they can all see what might not be working, – Danley said.

In addition, UC and Elmhurst Medical Center have electronic sensors in all of their facilities follow hand washing and hand disinfection among staff.

In this latest report, Northwestern Memorial Hospital also upgraded its safety rating to B. Northwestern Memorial got a C during the last two classification periods, surprising many who had long considered it one of the top hospitals in the state.

US News & World Report, which annually ranks hospitals using a different methodology than Leapfrog, recognized Northwestern Memorial best hospital in illinois for 11 straight years, something Northwestern often advertises on its signs.

Each year, a number of organizations rate hospitals, all using different methodologies and come to different results.