Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Ratings: Community Medical Center

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Leapfrog Group released its spring hospital safety grades, and Community Medical Center received a B for the second-straight survey.

The nonprofit health care watchdog group grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from "A" to "F" based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

Community Medical Center was one of 16 New Jersey hospitals that received top marks in the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Tuesday.

The latest ratings reflect care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Leapfrog Group said its and other groups' research showed the pandemic has had a negative effect on "health care delivery at every level and setting, from staffing shortages to increased infections to the very care patients receive," according to the Adult Patient Experience at Acute Care Hospitals survey, also released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group.

Read more: New Jersey Hospital Safety Grades 2022: The Best And Worst

To determine each hospital's grade, a panel of medical experts selected 30 evidence-based measures of patient safety such as postoperative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury. They then determined the weight of each measure based on evidence, opportunity for improvement and patient impact.

Community Medical Center received a mix of scores. The hospital received good scores in infections except sepsis infections, with 6.68 per 1,000 patients compared with an average of 4.96. There were four categories under surgical problems where the hospital was below average, with 168.5 deaths per 1,000 people who had a serious treatable complication after surgery, blood leakage (2.62 vs. 2.54 average), kidney injury (1.52 vs. 1.42) and serious breathing problems (8.95 vs. 5.18).

There were other below-average scores but they were minimally below the averages for their categories. The full scores are here.

Data on each measure was collected through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Information from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, available to all hospitals to complete, also affects grades.

Currently, Leapfrog does not assign grades to military or Veterans Administration hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children's hospitals or outpatient surgery centers.