VA Hospital Safety Ratings: UVA Health Medical Centers In Haymarket, Manassas Honored

MANASSAS, VA —UVA Health's medical centers in Manassas and Haymarket earned "A" grades this week, according to the spring 2023 hospital safety grades released by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog.

The Leapfrog Group uses an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

In Virginia, 27 hospitals received an A grade, 28 hospitals received a B, and 14 hospitals received a C. No hospitals in Virginia received a D grade or an F. Last fall, one hospital received a D grade.

Erik Shannon is the chief executive officer of UVA Health Haymarket Medical Center and UVA Health Prince William Medical Center.

"The teams at UVA Health Haymarket and Prince William Medical Center are committed to continuously improving, and receiving our 10th Hospital Safety Grade ‘A’ in a row exemplifies that commitment," Shannon said. "The pandemic challenged us as health care professionals, and we are proud to lean on our culture of safety and continue delivering high quality care to the Manassas and Haymarket communities."

High rates of three health care-associated infections, or HAIs, “should stop hospitals in their tracks,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a news release, noting that “infections like these can be life for death for some patients.”

“We recognize the tremendous strain the pandemic put on hospitals and their workforce, but alarming findings like these indicate hospitals must recommit to patient safety and build more resilience,” Binder said.

The problematic infections are Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA; central line-associated bloodstream infections, or CLABSI; and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, or CAUTI. When compared to rankings that covered the period immediately before the COVID-19 outbreak, the analysis found an increased infection ratio for all three infections. The spring 2023 rankings cover late 2021 and 2022.

However, another such infection, Clostridioides difficile, or C.Diff, improved and there was no significant change for surgical site infections post surgery, the report said. The standardized infection ratio used to measure changes in the rates of infections compares the actual number of reported infections to the predicted number at each hospital.

“Not only are HAIs among the leading causes of death in the U.S., they also increase length of hospitalization stays and add to costs,” Binder said. “Our pre-pandemic data showed improved HAI measures, but the spring 2023 Safety Grade data spotlights how hospital responses to the pandemic led to a decline in patient safety and HAI management.”

Patient experience measures included communication with nurses and doctors, staff responsiveness, and communication about medicine and discharge information. Nationally, the average of all five measures declined when compared to pre-pandemic measures, according to the report.

"This new update of Hospital Safety Grades shows that, at the national level, we saw deterioration in patient safety with the pandemic," Binder said. "But this hospital received an ‘A’ despite those challenges. I congratulate all the leaders, staff, volunteers and clinicians who together made that possible."