Doylestown Hospital Gets 'A' Grade For Safety In Newest Rating

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated Doylestown Hospital was the only Bucks County hospital to receive an A grade. Grand View Health in Sellersville also received an A. Patch regrets the error.

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Doylestown Hospital was one of two Bucks County hospital to receive an A grade for patient safety in a new assessment by the nonprofit Leapfrog Group. The organization assesses hospital safety across the country and publishes its findings in the form of letter grades twice a year.

Doylestown Hospital has received five straight A grades. For the Fall 2018 grades, it received the highest safety rating of any local hospital in Bucks County. One other hospital, Grand View Health, also received an A. All other Bucks County hospitals assessed by the group got C grades in the most recent analysis.

Here is how all Bucks County hospitals did in the Fall 2018 ratings:

• Doylestown Hospital, Doylestown (A)
• Grand View Health, Sellersville (A)
• Jefferson Bucks, Langhorne (C)
• Lower Bucks Hospital, Bristol (C)
• St. Luke's Quakertown Hospital, Quakertown (C)
• St. Mary Medical Center, Langhorne (C)

Click here to see how all 131 hospitals in Pennsylvania were graded.

"This recognition is made possible through a culture of teamwork and a relentless pursuit of excellence in care and outcomes," said Jim Brexler, President and CEO of Doylestown Health. "Our commitment to patient safety is at the core of our mission. The Leapfrog patient safety score is an important validation that we're delivering the best care to our patients."

The organization 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 28 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 Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. Leapfrog says more than two-dozen evidence-based measures of patient safety are used to calculate the grades. Applying that information, a numerical score is then created and converted into one of five letter grades.

"Leapfrog's Hospital Safety Grades recognize hospitals like Doylestown Hospital that focus on advancing patient safety. This ranking provides an important resource for patients, and a benchmark for hospitals, to determine how care at one hospital compares to others in a region," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. "Hospitals that earn an A Hospital Safety Grade deserve to be recognized for their efforts in preventing medical harm and errors."

The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade

“Health care was an important issue in the 2018 midterm elections, yet both parties are still neglecting the third leading cause of death in America—errors and infections in hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “Every elected official, from city councilors, to senators, to the President, should hold hospitals accountable and support efforts to improve patient safety.”

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.)

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