Morristown Medical Center Receives A Grade For Safety: Nonprofit

MORRISTOWN, NJ — Morristown Medical Center earned an A rating from health safety grading group Leapfrog.

This is the fifth season in a row the hospital has been given an A grade for patient safety. Grades are given out twice a year, once in the spring and the fall.

The hospital had low complication rates for surgery, including preventible deaths. They also had low rates of MRSA infections, and staff worked together to prevent errors, the group said.

"Morristown Medical Center’s fifth consecutive 'A' – the highest grade available from Leapfrog based on publicly available hospital safety data – is a testament to our medical, clinical and support staff’s expertise and sustained commitment to patient safety, quality and positive outcomes. This ranking assists our community in making informed decisions when they’re searching for high-quality medical care," Trish O’Keefe, president of Morristown Medical Center, said.

Despite their A grade, Morristown Medical Center had some weak areas. The hospital had a below average score for communication with doctors, communication about discharge and medicines, and responsive hospital staff. They also had an above average rate of blood clots during surgery.

"Errors and infections in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America, and people deserve to know which of their hospitals are best at preventing them," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a press release.

Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades. The goal of the rankings is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

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 27 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.)

The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The grades released on Tuesday showed that five states — Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho — showed significant improvement since the safety grades were first implemented in 2012.

Image via Morristown Medical Center