Hospital Safety Grades 2020: How Lake Norman Hospitals Fared

HUNTERSVILLE, NC — Several hospitals in North Carolina received top grades for safety while others didn’t quite measure up, according to new spring 2020 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group recently.

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.

It’s worth noting 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.

In North Carolina:

• 36 hospitals received an A grade.
• 27 hospitals received a B grade.
• 17 hospitals received a C grade.
• No hospitals received a D grade.
• No hospitals received an F grade.

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.

Here are the Leapfrog Group's spring 2020 grades for hospitals in the Charlotte metro and Lake Norman region:

• Novant Health Huntersville Medical Center, 10030 Gilead Rd., Huntersville — A
• Atrium Health University City, 8800 N. Tryon St., Charlotte — A
• Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, 171 Fairview Road, Mooresville — B
• Atrium Health Cabarrus, 920 Church Street, Concord — B
• Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, 200 Hawthorne Lane, Charlotte — B
• Carolinas Medical Center - Mercy, 2001 Vail Ave., Charlotte — B
• Carolinas Medical Center, 1000 Blythe Blvd., Charlotte — B
• CaroMont Regional Medical Center, 2525 Court Dr., Gastonia — B
• Iredell Memorial Hospital, 557 Brookdale Drive, Statesville — C

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.

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 was equivalent to what it is 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.

For a full description of the methodology, go here.