NEWS RELEASE
MYMICHIGAN HEALTH
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MIDLAND – MyMichigan Medical Centers recently received updated safety grades from The Leapfrog Group, an independent national watchdog organization committed to health care safety.
The safety grade is a letter grade assigned to eligible general hospitals across the country and updated every six months, in the fall and again in the spring. It assesses how well hospitals prevent medical errors and other harms to patients.
For the spring 2024 safety grade, MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena achieved its second consecutive ‘A’. MyMichigan medical centers in Alma and West Branch improved from a 'B' to an 'A'. The medical centers in Midland and Sault Ste. Marie each received a ‘C.’
The medical center in Clare does not meet volume thresholds for scoring, and Gladwin is not graded as it is designated as a critical access hospital.
According to Leapfrog, MyMichigan Health medical centers score higher than average where patients are surveyed on their hospital experience. Standards are consistently met at the highest-level demonstrating structures and processes are present to protect patients from harm.
Each medical center achieved the highest score for having nurse staffing plans in place that ensure there are enough registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and assistive personnel providing direct care to patients in medical, surgical, or med-surg units each day.
Leapfrog results over time show MyMichigan medical centers continue to have lower than average rates of infection in multiple health care-associated infection categories.
“Our medical center teams work incredibly hard to prevent complications and infections in our patients,” said Paul Berg, MD, chief medical officer, MyMichigan Health.
“We have constant surveillance for patients who are high risk for developing these. Achieving high grades reflects the results of hardwiring patient safety into our daily work and maintaining constant focus by our teams every day to provide patients the best care.”
MyMichigan Health has recently heightened its focus on complications such as blood clots, respiratory distress and bleeding that are common in post-operative patients.
“Thoroughly analyzing these events is critical to confirming there was nothing we could have done differently, but even more importantly, what more we can do to prevent patients from developing these issues,” said Dr. Berg.
MyMichigan uses Leapfrog grades as one tool to evaluate its current practices against other hospitals and look for areas to improve; however, grades are calculated using older data.
“By the time grades are updated, we have already implemented improvements that will take several grade cycles to be reflected in safety grades,” Dr. Berg concluded.
The Leapfrog Group scores hospitals twice per year on up to 30 standards of excellence in patient care.
Under the guidance of the nation’s leading patient safety experts, Leapfrog uses national performance data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as well as an extensive survey completed voluntarily by hospitals to evaluate the quality of patient care across many areas of hospital performance including infection rates, surgery, maternity care, and the hospital’s capacity to prevent complications or medication and other errors.
Rigorous standards are defined in each year’s hospital safety grade methodology.
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