OCH Regional Medical Center was awarded an ‘A’ in the fall 2020 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, a national distinction recognizing OCH’s achievements protecting patients from harm and providing safer health care. The Leapfrog Group is an independent national watchdog organization committed to health care quality and safety. The Safety Grade assigns an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade to all general hospitals across the country and is updated every six months. It is based on a hospital’s performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other harms to patients in their care.
“This outstanding achievement shows a commitment to a culture of safety and not just during a pandemic but every day for every patient,” said OCH Administrator/CEO Jim Jackson. “Patient quality and safety is an on-going process, and we believe in continually monitoring performance in order to improve patient care and outcomes. When benchmarked with larger Mississippi hospitals, OCH performs very well, and we are proud of the safe, quality care we provide to our patients every day.”
OCH received some of its highest scores for preventing safety problems such as dangerous bed sores, patient falls and injuries and air or gas bubbles in the blood.
“Achieving these high scores is in direct correlation of our staff anticipating our patients’ needs and taking the initiative to prevent potential problems,” said OCH Patient Safety Officer Amy Loggins, RN. “By taking precautions like assisting patients when they want to get up, moving patients regularly and checking for bed sores, and safely putting in and taking out catheters and other tubes, we were able to earn high scores in this category.”
“We are extremely grateful to hospital leadership and health care workers who have remained steadfast in prioritizing patient safety as our nation battles COVID-19,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “This ‘A’ is a testament to the care and commitment of those who work for OCH. With the current pandemic exposing existing flaws within the U.S. health care system, we appreciate you putting patient safety first. Lives depend on it.”
Developed under the guidance of a national Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public at hospitalsafetygrade.org.