Blessing Hospital earns sixth straight top patient safety score from The Leapfrog Group

QUINCY — An independent national healthcare watchdog organization has given Blessing Hospital a grade of “A” for patient safety for the sixth consecutive survey period. The spring 2023 grades reflect performance primarily during the height of the pandemic.

In a press release, Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said, “This new update of hospital safety grades shows that, at the national level, we saw deterioration in patient safety with the pandemic. But Blessing Hospital received an ‘A’ despite those challenges. I congratulate all the leaders, staff, volunteers and clinicians who together made that possible.”

The Leapfrog Group, founded by 2,000 large employers and other purchasers of healthcare, assigns a letter grade of A through F every six months to approximately 2,900 general hospitals across the country. It is the only hospital ratings program based exclusively on hospital prevention of medical errors and patient harm.

The grading system is based on more than 30 performance measures reflecting errors, injuries, accidents, infections and the systems hospitals have in place to prevent harm. Grades are updated in the fall and spring. Typically, only one-third of hospitals surveyed receive an ‘A’ grade.

One of the newest additions to Blessing Hospital’s patient safety efforts is a sophisticated, computerized system that helps identify patients with sepsis earlier than possible previously. Sepsis is a potentially deadly but difficult-to-diagnose infection that can be fatal in as little as 12 hours.

“In every industry, healthcare included, doing business today is more challenging than ever before for so many reasons,” said Maureen Kahn, president and chief executive officer of Blessing Health. “What has not changed is the around-the-clock commitment of Blessing Hospital physicians, nurses and all other care providers, to the safety of their patients. This exceptional achievement confirms that, and we could not be more proud of the persistent patient-safety focus of the Blessing Hospital team.”

Mary Frances Barthel, chief quality and safety officer for Blessing Health, says humans are not perfect and no process or procedure is foolproof, making this accomplishment even more significant.

“Caregivers do not deliver nationally-ranked patient safety for themselves. They do it for each and every patient who relies upon and trusts their care to Blessing Hospital,” Barthel said. “Safety is a health outcome that patients should expect from their provider and that they most definitely deserve.”

In addition to receiving the top grade for the spring 2023 survey period, Blessing earned ‘A’ grades for both survey periods in 2022 and 2021 and the fall survey period of 2020.

Visit HospitalSafetyGrade.org to see the details of Blessing Hospital’s latest patient safety grade.