Hospitals in Iowa fall short in safety rankings, with none earning top ‘A’ grade

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Iowa, along with North Dakota, Wyoming and Vermont, has no hospitals receiving an ‘A’ grade in a recent safety report by the Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit that analyzes publicly available data.

Alexandra Campione is the program manager, and she says one in four hospital inpatients are impacted by these problems.

“Unfortunately, Iowa has no ‘A’ grades nationwide. About 30% of hospitals have ‘A’’s so it’s really unfortunate that people in Iowa don’t have access to an ‘A’ hospital,” Campione said.

Campione says they have two categories: one for processes and structures and another for outcome measures. The first category looks at infrastructure, technology and ICU staffing among other things.

The second category sees outcome measures by observing things that can happen to a patient in their hospital room or be the result of a surgery.

“We look at 22 measures, and these measures are all important to ensuring that mistakes don’t happen in the hospital,” she said. “The first category is processes and structures that a hospital can have in place to prevent those errors from happening. 50% of the grade are outcome measures.”

Thirty Iowa hospitals are mentioned in the report, with CHI Health Mercy in Council Bluffs being the only one with a ‘B’. Of the 30 hospitals, 15 got a ‘C’ and 11 got a ‘D’. The three hospitals that got an ‘F’ were Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Genesis Medical Center in Davenport and UnityPoint Health Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge.

“So these look at the rate of infection for patients in the hospital, the rate of harm. So things like something going wrong during surgery or after surgery and these are really serious events that can result in death or serious complications that result in the patient spending way too long in the hospital or more time than they needed to. It also looks at things like patients falling,” Campione said.

She also added that hospitals that are owned or managed under a single parent organization have a better chance of getting an ‘A’ ranking.

“There’s a higher percentage of hospitals that are ‘A’’s that are in a system. So there’s no ignoring that if you’re in a system and you have increased resources, it is easier to accomplish some of these goals,” she said. “But we do see rural community hospitals with low resources getting to an ‘A’. We’ve seen it firsthand.”

Iowa’s News Now reached out to all three of the hospitals that got an ‘F’ and Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids shared that not participating in the survey earns you a low score automatically.

In a statement they said, “Unlike other quality and safety programs, LeapFrog does not share detailed data or feedback with hospitals that can be used for continuous improvement; instead, it simply assigns a grade.”

Some of the survey qualifications relate to staffing, and hospitals may be affected by the national nursing shortage. However, Campione says it all has to do with a hospital’s priorities.

“There’s a lot of competing priorities that a hospital can have. So we really believe at LeapFrog that patients’ safety should be at the top and then work from there,” she added. “And honestly, it’s not something that once you reach the finish line, it’s done. It’s something that every single day you’re putting work into ensuring that these accidents don’t happen.”

And she emphasized that they believe that all hospitals could reach higher grades.

“So our survey really lays out exactly the standards for that. We believe all hospitals should be reaching and we’d hope to see them eventually reaching them,” she said.

The report also notes that medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections in general hospitals in the United States cause close to 250,000 deaths each year.

You can read the full statement for Mercy Medical Center below.

Mercy Medical Center does not participate in the Leapfrog survey. In Leapfrog’s rating model, non-participation automatically results in a lower score and grade.Unlike other quality and safety programs, Leapfrog does not share detailed data or feedback with hospitals that can be used for continuous improvement; instead, it simply assigns a grade.Mercy remains committed to quality and safety and continues to be recognized nationally for these efforts, earning numerous high-profile awards and accreditations.