Southern Ocean Medical Center Receives 'B' Safety Grade

MANAHAWKIN, NJ — Southern Ocean Medical Center received a B grade in hospital safety, according to new fall 2019 ratings released Thursday by the Leapfrog Group. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 33 percent earned an A grade, a 1 percent increase from the last round of safety grades, released in Spring 2019.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Maine, Utah, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Three states — Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota — did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

The Leapfrog Group, a national watchdog organization, gave Southern Ocean Medical Center an A in four of the previous five marking periods before Thursday — the hospital received a B in spring 2018. But a hospital spokesperson said they have improved since the last reporting period.

"Southern Ocean Medical Center constantly strives to build upon the excellent level of care we provide our patients," said Anne Green. "Since the reporting period for the most recent grade, we have made significant improvements. Hospital-acquired infections and patient safety indicators are at an all-time low. We remain vigilant in our approach to quality and safety and are constantly focused on enhancing our systems and processes in order to provide the safest, most effective care possible."

The release of the Fall 2019 safety grades coincides with the 20th anniversary of a published report that revealed nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year because of preventable medical errors.

"In stark contrast to 20 years ago, we're now able to pinpoint where the problems are, and that allows us to grade hospitals," Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. "It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process."

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 performance measures taken from federal government data and the group's own hospital survey to "produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors." The group 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.)

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