Harford Memorial Gets 'C' For Safety

HAVRE DE GRACE, MD — Harford Memorial Hospital received a C for hospital safety, according to new ratings released by the Leapfrog Group. The nonprofit watchdog organization focused its ratings on errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

The hospital in Havre de Grace was one of 14 in the state of Maryland that received a C grade. It was one of four University of Maryland medical institutions to earn a C; others were Upper Chesapeake in Bel Air, University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore and University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown.

Two University of Maryland hospitals earned an A — St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson and Charles Regional Medical Center in La Plata — while one, Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, received a D.

The grades are released by Leapfrog twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

University of Maryland Harford Memorial Hospital received a perfect score for not allowing gas or air bubbles to develop during procedures and not leaving any dangerous objects in patients' bodies during surgery. It was also near the top as far as preventing falls and received high marks for how well its nurses and doctors communicate with patients.

It was dinged for a lack of technological processes to prevent errors, such as computerizing rather than handwriting prescription orders and scanning bar codes on patients' ID bracelets to ensure medications are correct. The data also showed a higher-than-average incidence of surgical wounds splitting open after major surgeries and more urinary tract infections and blood infections than would be expected based on the number of patients it treats.

Leapfrog assigns A, B, C, D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 28 measures that are taken together to "produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors." The group uses performance measures from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

Leapfrog began including Maryland in its rankings in 2017. Before that, the nonprofit watchdog — which has been compiling its rankings since 2012 — was unable to obtain data from the state because of a federal waiver that exempted Maryland from reporting key safety metrics.

Harford Memorial Hospital has had a C grade since the ratings began — in fall 2017, spring 2018, fall 2018 and now spring 2019.

This time around, no Maryland hospitals got an F. Here's a summary of the grades for the state for spring 2019:

• A — 10 hospitals
• B — 11 hospitals
• C – 14 hospitals
• D — 5 hospitals
• F — 0 hospitals

SEE ALSO: 5 Hospitals Get 'D' In Maryland Hospital Safety Grades

For this round of rankings, the Leapfrog Group's research found that patients at hospitals that receive D or F grades face a 92 percent greater risk of avoidable death compared with A-grade hospitals. At C and B hospitals, patients on average face an 88 percent and 35 percent greater risk respectively.

Initially, Maryland had one hospital with an F in fall 2017, and a different hospital that received the lone F in spring 2018. Since fall 2018, there have been zero Maryland hospitals with F scores, and grades across the state have improved overall.

— By Patch editors Feroze Dhanoa and Elizabeth Janney