Advocacy group gives Stanford hospital a ‘C’

Quality control officer disputes Leapfrogs’ patient safety score

A hospital watchdog has given Stanford Health Care its lowest rating for patient safety in the past three years, according to recently released rankings.

The Leapfrog Group, a national organization that advocates for hospital transparency, gave Stanford a “C” among its grading of approximately 2,500 general acute-care hospitals across the nation this week. Leapfrog assigns ratings to those hospitals twice a year; Stanford received “B” in 2017 and the last six months of 2015 and 2016, and an “A” the first six months of 2015 and 2016.

Stanford performed below average in 15 out of 27 safety criteria in Leapfrog’s spring 2018 release of ratings, mostly involving hospital-acquired infections, surgery complications and safety issues. In contrast, Stanford’s staff, doctors and nurses received high marks and the hospital did well on most of its practices to prevent errors. The full score can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2Hqenfr.

Ann Weinacker, interim chief quality officer at Stanford, said Leapfrog’s rating doesn’t paint an accurate picture of recent strides the hospital has made to address patient safety, because the data is outdated by up to three years.

“The main issue we have with Leapfrog is the data that is reported is really quite old,” Weinacker said. “We have been looking at much more real-time data around these issues . ... While the Leapfrog report is a lagging indicator, ratings based on more recent performance reflect the gains Stanford Health Care’s new initiatives have produced.”

Leapfrog’s website said the organization sifts through data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Hospital Association’s annual survey.

Weinacker added that U.S. News and World Report uses similar data and recently ranked Stanford ninth in the nation and best in the region for patient safety. She said a hospital improvement initiative between Stanford Health Care and the university’s School of Medicine has determined that just one colon surgical infection was acquired at the hospital between November 2017 and February. An intensive care unit for cardiac patients recently went 30 days without a hospital-acquired bloodstream infection, Weinacker said.

“We look at every hospitalacquired infection, we look at every pressure ulcer, and try to understand how did it happen, is there anything in our system that caused that and how can we protect the next patient from contracting that,” she said, adding that many patients admitted to the hospital face more complex situations than those in an average general acute-care facility.

The ratings come at a time when SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, a healthcare workers union, is trying to qualify ballot measures for the November election in Palo Alto, Redwood City and three other Bay Area cities where Stanford has medical facilities. The measures would prohibit hospitals and other medical facilities from charging patients more than 15 percent of the actual cost of providing care. If passed by voters, the measures would take effect Jan. 1. Violators would have to issue rebates or reduce bills to patients if they’re found to have charged higher than acceptable fees.