Harford Memorial Gets 'D' For Patient Safety In Hospital Ratings

HAVRE DE GRACE, MD — Several hospitals in Maryland received top grades for safety while others didn't quite measure up, according to new spring 2020 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group. Harford Memorial Hospital received a "D" for patient safety, on a scale from A to F.

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.

Safety grades are released by the nonprofit organization twice per year, in the spring and the fall. The ratings of more than 2,600 hospitals focus on accidents, injuries and infections, and help to assess how well a facility prevents medical errors and other harm to patients.

Harford Memorial Hospital received poor marks for blood infections, serious breathing problems after surgery and incidence of dangerous bed sores and earned the worst score among hospitals among the 2,700 studied for its lack of intensivists, which Leapfrog says are specially trained doctors caring for intensive care unit patients.

Harford Memorial Hospital received high marks for preventing bacterial infections, not leaving objects in patients' bodies during surgery, preventing air/gas bubbles in the blood and providing effective communication from nurses and doctors.

The metrics used to determine this spring's hospital grades originated from safety data reported for periods ending in 2018 and 2019. The report does not take into account the strain the new coronavirus outbreak is placing on some hospitals where staff are experiencing shortages of drugs and protection equipment.

This is the first D for Harford Memorial, which has received a C in Leapfrog's previous rankings.

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 were equivalent to those 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 latest grades show 33 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an "A" grade while 25 percent earned a "B." Some 35 percent earned a "C" grade, 7 percent a "D" and less than 1 percent received an "F" grade.

In Maryland, 12 hospitals received an A grade in the spring 2020 Leapfrog hospital ratings:

• Anne Arundel Medical Center
• Garrett Regional Medical Center
• Greater Baltimore Medical Center
• Holy Cross Germantown Hospital
• Howard County General Hospital
• Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
• MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital
• MedStar St. Mary's Hospital
• Suburban Hospital
• UM Baltimore Washington Medical Center
• University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus
• University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center

In Maryland, only one hospital got an "F," and that was Bon Secours in Baltimore.

Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air received a "C" grade from Leapfrog.

See a full description of the Leapfrog methodology for hospital safety grades.

Harford Memorial Hospital is slated for closure, a measure the Maryland Health Care Commission approved in April. The closure will not occur until after University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health is ready to open its to-be-developed freestanding medical facility in Aberdeen.

The closure of Harford Memorial Hospital will not occur for about two and a half years, according to Upper Chesapeake.

Related:

• Harford Memorial Closure: Upper Chesapeake Plans Approved
• Maryland Hospital Safety Grades Released For Fall 2019
• Harford Memorial Gets 'C' For Safety In Spring 2019 Leapfrog Ratings

This article included reporting by Patch editor Max Bennett.