Corridor, national hospital safety scores broken down

Safety first was the subject of rankings released earlier this week by the national not-for-profit organization the Leapfrog Group. The rankings, which included Corridor hospitals, was part of its Hospital Safety Score.

You can read our story, as well as Corridor hospitals' concerns with the rankings, here.

The scores were assigned to hospitals based on infections, injuries and medical and medication errors. The Hospital Safety Score uses 26 measures of publicly available hospital data to produce a single score representing a hospital's overall performance in patient safety.

Scores were calculated under the guidance of a nine-member panel of patient safety experts. The time period reflected in the scores was from July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2011.

The data can be viewed online.

A series of measures were taken into account to determine a hospital's safety score. One of the categories, for example, measures foreign objects retained after surgery, which is reported as a rate per 1,000 patient discharges.

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, which earned an A overall, scored 0.113 in this category.

Another field measured is death from serious treatable complications after surgery - also is reported as a rate per 1,000 patient discharges. The measure refers to surgical patients who died after developing serious complications that could have been treated, according to Hospital Safety Score on its website.

The best performing hospital scored 54.89 in this category. The average hospital scored 113.65. St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids, which earned a B overall, scored 88.22.

Other categories look at the number of falls and traumatic injuries that occur during a patient's stay in the hospital.

Process measures taken into account include the hospital's computerized prescriber order entry system, as well as leadership structures and systems, and culture measurement, feedback and intervention. According to the data for the area's local hospitals, not all institutions reported information in these categories.

To address the gap, a methodology was created to use secondary data sources and deal with missing data.

Information on the methodology behind the study also is

online.