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Local hospitals receive "C" grades for safety
Hospitals are constantly saving lives, but are they keeping you safe during your stay?
One group graded hospital safety around the country, and handed out "C" grades to those in the Tri-Cities. Leapfrog Group is an independent nonprofit organization. It enlisted patient-safety experts to judge data collected from hospitals and give them a grade. According to Leapfrog, about 180,000 people are killed every year by hospital errors. Mary Lanning in Hastings, Good Samaritan in Kearney, and St. Francis Medical Center in Grand Island all received a "C" letter grade. "Obviously that's not something we would want but I think there's a lot of factors that go into that," said Ronda Ehly, vice president for patient strategy at Mary Lanning Healthcare. The scores were based on 26 measures including how often patients fell or were injured and how well a hospital addresses risks and hazards. But, the low grade may be misleading. "Even though at this point Mary Lanning has a "C," I think part of it was the data," Ehly said. "Most of it's probably going to be better than two years old. We did not participate in my knowledge in the LeapFrog survey so the data would have come to LeapFrog from other sources." Nationally, 47 percent of the hospitals were graded a "C" or scored a pending grade. But, the information can be helpful. "It is something I think hospitals need to pay attention to," Ehly said. "We certainly don't want our customers thinking, our patients thinking that they're not going to get safe quality care here." How would Mary Lanning Healthcare rate itself? Ehly says based on those 26 factors, she would give them at least a B+. "I mean there's always opportunity for improvement, particularly in some of those areas that they're missing," she added. What will the hospital do to increase safety? "One of the things that we're going to focus on and as we develop our new website is being able to put more current data out there for our customers," explained Ehly. "So, they can see the new hospital and compare the site from 2 to 6 months ago." Other safety measures Mary Lanning Healthcare has implemented includes bar-coded medication administration, a team that evaluates pre-operative and post-operative conditions and a fall system where they assess patients for fall risk. |
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