These metro-east hospitals got lower safety grades this fall, new watchdog report shows
A national watchdog group recently scored some southwestern Illinois and St. Louis area hospitals below average for safety metrics, including health care associated infections, surgical errors and harmful events.
The Leapfrog Group is a nonprofit organization that provides ratings and safety data for hospitals, and it recently released grades for nearly 3,000 short-term, acute care hospitals across the country. The organization updates grades twice each year, once in the spring and once in the fall.
Leapfrog’s safety grade is the only rating system focused specifically on the prevention of errors, the organization’s director of health care ratings, Katie Stewart, said in a recent interview with the News-Democrat.
“Nationally, we are seeing improvements in patient safety in many different areas, such as health care associated infections,” Stewart said.
A health care associated infection is one that wasn’t present when a patient was admitted to the hospital, but developed due to poor infection control. While U.S. hospitals have on average seen improvements and returned to pre-pandemic infection rates, several southwestern Illinois hospitals continue to struggle. These infections are among the leading threats to patient safety, Stewart said.
Two other areas where metrics are improving nationally are hand washing and medication safety.
As seven of eight local hospitals declined to participate in Leapfrog’s voluntary survey, data is unavailable for these facilities for metrics that rely on self-reporting, including doctors order medication through a computer, safe medication administration, hand washing, staff work together to prevent errors, effective leadership to prevent errors, nursing and bedside care for patients and specially trained doctors care for intensive care unit patients.
Leapfrog’s methodology changed this fall from the spring grades, and the organization now assigns hospitals the lowest score in areas relying on self-reporting when the hospital declines to report. Below, those categories are not listed as areas where hospitals were scored below average, since actual data is not available.
“We want to emphasize hospitals being transparent and making this information available so that patients can make their decisions based on current and accurate available data,” Stewart said.
It takes time and resources to self-report for the survey, but Stewart said Leapfrog officials try to balance the reporting burden with the goal of providing patients crucial information about safety and error prevention.
“The things that we ask about are endorsed, validated measures, and they’re things that hospitals should be looking at,” Stewart said. “They may already be collecting that data internally, and hopefully they are.”
Illinois improved in the fall rankings for the states with the greatest percentage of top-performing hospitals, jumping from 30th to 23rd place. More than 29% of Illinois hospitals received A grades in the fall grading cycle. Out of eight local hospitals, four saw lower grades compared to the spring, and none received higher grades.
“It’s promising to see that patients in the state of Illinois have more options of choosing ‘A’ hospitals, certainly we’d love to see continued improvement in that area,” Stewart said.
Here’s what to know about how metro-east hospitals performed in Leapfrog’s latest grading cycle, plus how to interpret ratings and which areas should be most heavily considered.
Memorial Hospital Belleville
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: B
Fall 2023 grade: C
Here are the areas in which Memorial Hospital Belleville scored below average this fall:
MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection
Infection in the blood
Falls causing broken hips
Collapsed lung
Memorial Hospital Belleville declined to participate in Leapfrog’s survey. Both that facility and Barnes-Jewish Hospital are part of BJC HealthCare.
“BJC HealthCare is committed to patient safety as one of our core values. We support efforts to make quality outcomes data available to patients and to the public. We encourage people to seek out data on Medicare’s Care Compare site. We are committed to transparency by providing links to this information on the BJC website,” BJC HealthCare spokesperson Laura High wrote in an emailed statement to the BND.
“The Leapfrog analysis is based on a methodology that is a composite of process and outcome measures for which most of the process data is obtained from hospitals’ responses to a self-reported survey. We have concerns about relying on methodologies that utilize self-reporting on questionnaires, particularly those such as Leapfrog’s survey in which the self-reported data carries a significant impact in the overall results. For these reasons, BJC HealthCare hospitals have never participated in the Leapfrog survey.
“We believe our approach – based on methodical study and careful ongoing evaluation of outcomes – is a more effective means of improving patient safety and that our rigorous discipline and process over the years has made a significant impact on improving quality of care. All BJC hospitals are committed to providing the highest standard of care every day for every patient.”
Barnes-Jewish Hospital
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: C
Fall 2023 grade: C
Here are the areas in which Barnes-Jewish Hospital scored below average this fall:
C. diff infection
Infection in the urinary tract
Surgical site infection after colon surgery
Surgical wounds split open
Kidney injury after surgery
Barnes-Jewish Hospital officials also did not respond to Leapfrog’s survey.
HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in O’Fallon
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: B
Fall 2023 grade: B
Here are the areas in which HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in O’Fallon scored below average this fall:
Surgical wounds split open
Blood leakage
Serious breathing problem
Harmful events
Collapsed lung
Dangerous blood clot
HSHS officials at St. Elizabeth’s and St. Joseph’s did not respond to Leapfrog’s survey.
“HSHS is committed to providing quality patient care and continues to proactively manage and measure internal quality improvement initiatives that lead to positive patient outcomes,” HSHS spokesperson Kelly Barbeau wrote in an emailed statement to the BND.
“There are a variety of health care quality rating organizations (e.g. Leapfrog, HealthGrades, US News) that review and publish hospital quality scores. No two organizations rely on the same criteria for their ratings, which may include publicly reported data, such as data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and state databases; their own proprietary quality measures, or a mixture of both.
“HSHS supports the collection and publication of hospital quality data to help consumers make informed decisions about their health care. Since each rating organization relies on different metrics to create a quality ranking, grade or score for each hospital, it can be difficult to discern which ranking is most accurate.
“HSHS utilizes its internal quality teams to manage and measure a robust set of data and metrics, with the goal to continuously improve the standard of care. We have organized shared clinical quality governance councils to empower colleagues to have a voice in how to ensure our patients receive quality, safe and effective care. We also encourage patients and families to discuss individual care plans with their physician and care teams as part of their decision-making when choosing a hospital.”
HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Breese
Fall 2024 grade: B
Spring 2024 grade: B
Fall 2023 grade: B
Here is the area in which HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Breese scored below average this fall:
C. diff infection
In addition to the metrics for which data is not available due to lack of reporting, information about performance in infections and surgery problems is not available for St. Joseph’s. This can be because the service isn’t something a particular hospital provides or because the hospital didn’t have enough patients or cases to report data for a particular condition or procedure, according to Leapfrog.
Gateway Regional Medical Center
Fall 2024 grade: D
Spring 2024 grade: D
Fall 2023 grade: C
Here are the areas in which Gateway Regional Medical Center scored below average this fall:
C. diff infection
Communication about medicines
Communication about discharge
Communication with doctors
Communication with nurses
Responsiveness of hospital staff
Gateway Regional Medical Center officials did not respond to Leapfrog’s survey. Data was not available for some infection metrics and surgery problem metrics.
Additionally, Gateway Regional Medical Center officials were not immediately available for comment.
Anderson Hospital
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: B
Fall 2023 grade: B
Here is the area in which Anderson Hospital scored below average this fall:
Accidental cuts and tears
“Anderson Hospital participates in reporting quality information so it is available to the public. It’s important to note that there are many different reporting agencies, each with their own methodologies and criteria for evaluating hospitals. We encourage individuals to consider multiple sources when evaluating our performance,” Anderson Hospital spokesperson Natalie Head wrote in an emailed statement to the BND.
“Anderson Hospital completed its triennial accreditation with the Joint Commission this year, which is the gold standard of accreditation. For the 3rd year in a row, Anderson Hospital ranked in the top 6% of hospitals in the United States through another independent study done by Newsweek. Links to national and state programs and organizations that provide these reports are readily available on our quality page on our website.”
OSF Saint Anthony’s Health Center in Alton
Fall 2024 grade: A
Spring 2024 grade: A
Fall 2023 grade: C
OSF Saint Anthony’s Health Center was the only hospital of these eight to respond to Leapfrog’s survey, so more data is available about this facility.
Here are the areas in which OSF Saint Anthony’s Health Center in Alton scored below average this fall:
Surgical wounds split open
Harmful events
Data was not available for some infection measures, as well as the metric death from serious treatable complications.
“The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade places a premium on transparency and uses up to 30 national performance measures to determine a participating hospital’s patient safety grade. The rigor that The Leapfrog Group utilizes to formulate a grade is the same deliberate rigor that the clinical leaders here at OSF Saint Anthony’s implement as the foundation to create an environment that promotes patient safety,” the hospital’s interim president and chief nursing officer Lisa Schepers wrote in an emailed statement to the BND.
“We know our patients, and health care consumers in general, have access to more resources to educate themselves about who and where they want to receive care. We’ve established formal daily operational metric and process reviews to maintain a real-time gauge of where we are exceeding expectations and where improvement opportunities exist. We humbly accept this demonstration of our accomplishment for the Fall 2024 grading period which also produced an identical grade during the Spring 2024 grading period.”
SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: B
Fall 2023 grade: B
Here is the area in which SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia scored below average this fall:
Dangerous blood clot
SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia officials declined to respond to Leapfrog’s survey.
“As a Mission-based organization, SSM Health is dedicated to providing safe and high-quality care for all of our patients. This requires a strong commitment to continuous quality improvement, which is why we monitor all of our quality of care data in real time so that we can make adjustments when needed to ensure patients are receiving the best care possible,” spokesperson Erin Rinderer wrote in an emailed statement to the BND.
“It is important to note that the Leapfrog ratings were developed based on data that is, in some cases, up to three years old. It does not accurately reflect the most current data or recent improvements made at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital - Centralia. The Joint Commission recently gave St. Mary’s Hospital the Gold Seal of National Quality Approval for demonstrating continuous compliance with its performance standards and reflects SSM Health’s commitment to providing safe and effective patient care. The hospital also recently landed on Newsweek’s ‘World’s Best Hospitals of 2024’ list.
“SSM Health is committed to patient safety, and we support and advocate for the public reporting of information as a way to learn and improve care. However, most available industry data provides only a limited view of the complex picture of overall hospital safety. We encourage patients to seek out quality data from a number of reliable sources and use this information as part of a larger discussion with their doctors.”
How are hospital grades calculated?
Safety grades are calculated using up to 22 national safety measures from the Leapfrog survey, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other data sources. The full methodology is available online and is peer-reviewed and published by the Journal of Patient Safety.
Grades are composed 50% by process and structural measures and 50% by outcome measures. The scoring scales differ by the chosen measure.
How should you use these scores?
Leapfrog emphasizes you should not refuse emergency care based on hospital ratings. The group intends the scores to be used when planning things like childbirth, surgery referrals or chronic illness treatment.
The areas you should pay most attention to when choosing a hospital include hand washing, infection in the blood and patient falls, Leapfrog’s website says.
You should also consider how far off your hospital was from the average for any given standard. When evaluating a hospital, you can see the highest and lowest scores given, which helps in weighing a value. The “below average” category can include hospitals that scored 0.01 points under goal, along with facilities with the lowest possible score.
For hospitals that responded to Leapfrog’s survey, there’s often information available about which areas the hospital has improved in and which areas are not going in the right direction.
A hospital being ungraded does not denote a lack of safety. Ratings are often unavailable for smaller providers, children’s hospitals, surgical centers and critical access hospitals.
Leapfrog allows you to search for hospitals by name, location or state. There’s an online search tool where you can find information about more hospitals.
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