Stafford Hospital Receives A Safety Rating; Mary Washington Hospital "Not Graded"
Leapfrog released the Spring 2025 hospital safety grades this week.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Mary Washington Hospital was not graded for Spring 2025 by Leapfrog, the nonprofit organization that evaluates hospital safety and quality.
Stafford Hospital—which, like Mary Washington Hospital, is operated by Mary Washington Healthcare—maintained the A safety grade it received in Fall 2004. Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center received a C, also the same score it received in the fall.
Leapfrog releases Hospital Safety Grades in the spring and fall every year. The grades are assigned based on the hospital’s performance on 30 measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), as well as responses to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and information from other supplemental data sources.
Mary Washington Hospital received a C in Fall 2024 and a D in Spring 2024.
According to Leapfrog, Mary Washington Hospital was not eligible to receive a spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grade because it was missing data for patient safety indicator (PSI) 90.
PSI 90 is a composite of 10 other safety indicators, including rates of postoperative sepsis; postoperative hemorrhage or hematoma; postoperative respiratory failure; in-hospital falls with hip fractures; and others. It is calculated using Medicare fee-for-service claims.
The data available for Mary Washington Hospital at the CMS website included a footnote indicating that the hospital had reported discrepancies in their claims. According to Sarah Farinelli, a spokeswoman for Leapfrog, the organization’s policy is to notify hospitals when this footnote is present in their data.
“The hospital had the option to request that the data be used despite the footnote, but they did not,” Farinelli wrote in an email to the Advance.
Emily Thurston, director of communications for Mary Washington Healthcare, said the hospital was not graded by Leapfrog this period due to “a coding error in our electronic medical record system that we are resolving.”
“Beyond Leapfrog grades, our quality and safety indicators are being noticed nationally,” Thurston continued in an email to the Advance. “The American Hospital Association ran an article in March about our recent quality and safety improvements, calling our performance ‘incredible.’ And, the national healthcare company Vizient, shared that the most recent performance in patient safety at both Mary Washington and Stafford Hospitals is in the top 10% nationally. In fact, Mary Washington Hospital’s recent performance is the best in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The AHA story referenced by Thurston is a blurb included in a compilation of new patient safety programs implemented by the nation’s hospitals. The paragraph describes a new “unified Quality Governance structure” established because MWHC leaders realized the healthcare system “wasn’t scoring as high it would like on safety and quality measures.”
According to the blurb, the healthcare system “significantly improved its performance in preventing infections, mortality and readmissions.” The article did not include data pointing to the improvement.
This story was updated on May 8 to include more information about an article referenced by the MWHC spokeswoman.
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Yikes. I guess Mary Washington didn’t want to have another D grade published, so they asked to not be graded?
This doesn’t show well for the new CEO, Chris Newman. This does not represent a failure coding or paperwork, it is a failure of leadership pure and simple. The hospital has had many years to improve their Leapfrog grade, but has clearly failed.
It should be interesting to see how quality and safety fare at Mary Washington after the hospital loses its long term radiologists on July 1.