New Report Reveals The Safest Arizona Hospitals

By on May 21, 2019 0 1417Views

According to a hospital safety report card issued by the Leapfrog Group, Arizona ranks No. 34 in the nation.

Released May 15, the ranking follows Leapfrog’s findings of 161,000 avoidable deaths that occur in hospitals nationwide each year. The report doesn’t break out the number of avoidable hospital deaths by state, said Erica Mobley, director of operations for Leapfrog, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit representing the nation’s largest and most influential employers and purchasers of health care.

Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix stands out among all Arizona hospitals and even nationwide. Of the 2,600 graded hospitals across the country, Mayo Clinic Hospital is among only 41 hospitals that have earned straight A’s since Leapfrog began issuing the report cards in 2012.

With only nine hospitals — representing 20% of all hospitals in Arizona graded — getting As on their spring 2019 report card, most Arizona hospitals either received Bs or Cs on their Leapfrog safety report cards.

The report cards are issued twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall.

For Mobley, one thing that’s encouraging is there are no F hospitals in Arizona and only two hospitals received Ds on their report cards: Canyon Vista Medical Center in Sierra Vista and Valley View Medical Center in Fort Mohave.

“We would hope to see those hospitals not scoring as well to look around at their peers,” Mobley said. “What are these hospitals doing that is working? What processes do they have in place? What can we implement in our facility?”

While the number of unavoidable deaths nationwide has fallen from 205,000 in 2016, Mobley said there’s still much more hospitals can do to protect patients.

“There are 28 measures included in the safety grade,” Mobley said. “We look at both the processes that hospitals have in place to prevent errors as well as rates at which errors occurred in hospitals. There’s never one thing hospitals are doing wrong or not doing right that are contributing to these low grades.”

In reaction to the hospital’s high ranking, Dr. Richard Zimmerman, chair of Mayo’s Arizona Practice Clinical Quality Oversight Subcommittee, said that the “endorsements reinforce our century-old commitment to provide the highest quality care to each patient every day. While no single set of measures can perfectly represent health care quality, we’re proud to be recognized by so many.”

For a closer look at how all the hospitals ranked, click here.