How safe are our local hospitals? Here’s how they scored on a patient safety report

How safe are our local hospitals? It depends where you go.

According to a report released this month, Coastal Carolina Hospital and Beaufort Memorial Hospital rank among some of the best hospitals in the country for patient safety.

While the two hospitals both received an “A” on the Spring 2017 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Hilton Head Hospital scored a “C.”

The Hospital Safety Grade, which is produced by the nonprofit organization The Leapfrog Group and comes out every fall and spring, scores more than 2,600 hospitals across the country on how safe they keep their patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections.

Hospitals are awarded letter grades ranging from A to F based on how they scored in five major categories: infections; problems with surgery; practices to prevent errors; safety problems; and doctors, nurses and hospital staff.

For the last four grading periods, fall 2015 through spring 2017, Hilton Head Hospital has scored a ‘C’.

In the category of infections for spring 2017, Hilton Head Hospital scored among the lowest in the country in four of the five areas surveyed, including MRSA infections, infections in the blood and urinary tract during an ICU stay and surgical-site infections after colon surgery.

It also received the lowest rating in three of the seven categories involving doctors, nurses and hospital staff. While the best hospitals scored 100 for specially trained doctors care for ICU patients, Hilton Head Hospital was among those that received the worst score, 5.

Coastal Carolina Hospital scored a “C” from spring 2014 through spring 2016, but made significant improvements and scored an “A” on the last two reports. In the category of practice to prevent errors, the hospital scored as well as the best hospitals in the country in four of the six areas surveyed.

Both Hilton Head Hospital and Coastal Carolina Hospital are owned by Tenet Healthcare.

Beaufort Memorial Hospital went through the most progress of any local hospital. The hospital went from scoring a “D” in spring 2015, to receiving an “A” on the last two reports.

In the category of infections for the spring 2017 report, Beaufort Memorial Hospital scored as well as the best hospitals in the country in four of the five areas surveyed.

“To achieve an ‘A’ requires a hospital-wide commitment to safety, involving everyone from our housekeeping and food services staffs to the nurses, doctors and technicians on our medical team,” Beaufort Memorial Hospital president and CEO Russell Baxley said in a press release. “We continue to work hard every day to maintain our ‘A’ grade and provide our patients with the highest standards of care.”

South Carolina ranked 17 among the 50 states, based on the number of hospitals that earned an “A” compared to the total number of hospitals in the state. Of the 46 hospitals in the state participating in the survey, 18 received the top grade, including Colleton Medical Center in Walterboro.

Since The Leapfrog Group started the U.S. safety grade report in 2012, there have been significant strides in improving patient safety, such as a 21 percent decline in hospital-acquired conditions and millions of averted patient harms, according to the report.

But problems with safety still persist, with more than 1,000 people a day estimated to die from preventable errors.

In Savannah, Memorial University Medical Center, Candler Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital all received a grade of “C.”

In January, the three Savannah hospitals were penalized by the federal government for ranking in the bottom 25 percent for patient care complications.

The hospitals were three of 13 hospitals in Georgia to face penalties for not meeting standards according to conditions of the Affordable Care Act.

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 1:22 PM with the headline "How safe are our local hospitals? Here’s how they scored on a patient safety report."