The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade gave OCH Regional Medical Center a grade A, which represents the hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.
Assigned to more than 2,600 general acute-care hospitals, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety grade uses national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 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 and Health Information Technology Supplement.
Chief Nursing Officer at OCH Regional Medical Center Martha Fulcher and coordinator for Leapfrog said she is delighted to find out about the A ranking the hospital received because it shows the policies put in place at the hospital are working to help benefit the patients admitted to OCH.
“Leapfrog kind of validates all of the processes that we’ve put in place to keep our patients safe,” Fulcher said. “You just have to make sure that the patients know we are going to take safe care of them.”
Fulcher said the difficulty about receiving an A grade is the continual improvement to help better its services to maintain the A grade.
Fulcher said while some of the scores are lower in some parts, they are not at zero. For example, the number of falls and readmission are down, but not zero, and through this process, staff can push to make the number decrease even more.
“You never reach perfection, but that’s what you’re always striving for when it comes to patient care and taking care of somebody’s child or somebody’s mom,” Fulcher said. “You never want to stop.”
One example of ways OCH says it has improved its numbers comes with dealing with patients who are at a higher risk of falling.
Fulcher said staff administered a hospital-wide way of notifying employees of the at-risk patients. The process implements subtle ways like a flower on the patient’s door, on their charts and if being transferred, patients wear red socks to notify X-ray technicians to be aware of the patient’s risk.
Through Leapfrog, Fulcher said this helps maintain issues before problems arise. She said if there is ever a staffing issue, she can address how to fix the problem immediately.
“It makes you want to improve things and want the safety and the quality to go up,” Fulcher said.
President of the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors Orlando Trainer said OCH’s ranking speaks to the efforts of those at the hospital based on the resources it has.
“I want to commend them for their rankings,” Trainer said. “We are certainly proud of them.”
Hospitals affiliated with Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation and North Mississippi Health Services - the two entities that placed bids on OCH - received rankings as well.
Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle received an A, Baptist Memorial Hospital of Union County received an A, Baptist Memorial Hospital - North Mississippi received a B, Baptist Memorial Hospital DeSoto received a C.
North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo received an A.
When asked about the potential of having a larger entity coming to OCH affecting its rating, Trainer said it’s important to look at these grades from a lot of different perspectives.
“I’m sure Baptist has additional resources to help them to improve their rating without having to rely on any additional outside help,” Trainer said. “We have to make sure that we have the resources to continue to maintain that rate.”