By Ryan Dean
St. Louis, MO (KSDK) - A new report says several hospitals in the St. Louis metro area, including Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis University Hospital, get a "C" in patient safety.
The report, released Monday by The Leapfrog Group, a national not-for-profit created by large companies to conduct studies in healthcare, grades hospitals on their overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.
A nine person panel, comprised of medical experts, looked at more than two dozen factors focused on patient treatment and outcome. The 2,600 hospitals in the report received a grade A through F.
The "Hospital Safety Score Program" did not look at critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals and pediatric hospitals because a lack of public information available to complete report.
MORE: Click here to see how all St. Louis hospitals were graded
Some hospital administrators have been quoted in news articles since the report was release, questioning the study's validity, saying it disagrees with the methodology used.
Learn more about the study and the methodology used in compiling this report.
Dr. Keith Woeltje, Director Clinical Advisory Group, Center for Clinical Excellence at BJC HealthCare, released the following statement in response to the hospital's "C" grade:
Barnes-Jewish Hospital and BJC HealthCare are committed to patient safety and we support efforts to make quality outcomes data available to patients and to the public. We encourage people to seek out data on the Department of Health and Human Services' Hospital Compare site and we are also committed to transparency by providing links to this information on our website.
The Leapfrog analysis is based on a new methodology that is a composite of process and outcome measures, with process data obtained by hospitals' responses to a self-reported survey. We have concerns about relying on methodologies which utilize self-reporting questionnaires, which in this case can carry significant weight . We also have concerns about the validity of approaches that rely primarily on administrative data for quality measures. These data were never intended to be used for hospital comparisons. Historically, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and BJC HealthCare have not participated in the Leapfrog initiative.
We believe our approach - based on methodical study and careful ongoing evaluation of outcomes - is a more effective means of improving patient safety and that our rigorous discipline and process over the last decade has made a significant impact on improving quality of care. Barnes-Jewish Hospital is committed to providing the highest standard of care every day for every patient.
KSDK