“We’ve got phenomenal people, and in my opinion, for a community of this size, this is not typical to have such incredible capabilities that we have here,” said Adam Groshans, president of Mercy Health - Springfield Regional Medical Center.
Hospital leaders said they felt they were penalized for not participating in Leapfrog’s biannual survey, saying it is time consuming and labor intensive to gather that information, as well as said they believe they were penalized for not purchasing Leapfrog’s marketing materials.
LeapFrog says that is not true.
“Hospitals are never penalized regarding their decision to promote or not promote the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade. However, we do encourage all hospitals to participate in the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey,” said Katie Burggraf Stewart, director of health care ratings at Leapfrog.
The hospital has a three-star rating with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), and it’s Urbana branch has a five-star rating with CMS. For comparison, Kettering Health Troy has a four-star CMS rating. Upper Valley Medical Center, Kettering Health Dayton and Miami Valley Hospital each have three-star CMS ratings.
“We submit our information to various regulatory bodies that we’re required to send to, and we’ve proven year over year to perform extremely well with quality and safety,” Groshans said.
Leapfrog uses information from those regulatory bodies, Stewart said, but added they do take into consideration if hospitals participate in the survey.
“Most of our measures come from publicly available data reported by the federal government for regulatory purposes, so data from the Leapfrog survey is just one piece of the puzzle,” Stewart said. “However, when a hospital does not report, we must assume that they are not measuring for this very important standard of care, or else they would be completing the survey.”
Springfield Regional Medical Center scored below average in areas of infections and categories related to staff communication and responsiveness to patients, according to Leapfrog.
“We’ve made significant improvements year over year,” said Dr. Joseph Morman, chief clinical officer, about infections.
Leapfrog has Springfield Regional Medical Center rated as “worse than average” in Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) blood infections, but CMS’ ranking for the hospital says it is no different than national benchmark.
“We encourage this hospital to focus their efforts on improving on the various metrics included in the grade and developing a plan to report again to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey to be fully transparent to the public,” Stewart said.
Springfield Regional Medical Center scored average or above average in different surgery-related categories with Leapfrog. In other areas of health care-related injuries and serious complications, CMS ranked the hospital as being no different than the national rates.
For deaths among patients with serious treatable complications after surgery, Springfield Regional Medical Center ranked better than the national rate, CMS said.
In areas ranked lower with CMS were in patient survey ratings, which measure patients’ experiences of their hospital care. For the nearly 1,600 people who participated in the CMS survey―which is a survey response rate of about 17%―approximately 70% of patients said they felt their nurses and doctors “always” communicated well, which is lower than the state and national averages of around 80%.
The hospital continually measures patient and staff experiences, Groshans said.
“Year over year since 2021, we’ve seen improvement,” said Susan Moeller, director of quality.
The hospital is expanding in areas where other hospitals in the region have downsized, leaders said, such as in maternity care and opening a midwife program.
“We are the destination hospital for a lot of rural communities around us,” Groshans said, encouraging people to consult with a trusted doctor when deciding where to get care.
Other services added in 2024 include procedures in stroke prevention and treatment, neurology, oncology and heart health, including a minimally invasive treatment option for people with a leaky heart valve who are not eligible for traditional open-heart surgery. New low-dose radiation therapy can provide targeted pain relief and reduced inflammation in localized areas affected by osteoarthritis.
Leapfrog’s safety grades can be found at hospitalsafetygrade.org/ and CMS ratings and information can be found at medicare.gov/care-compare/.
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