(The Center Square) - Oklahoma ranked 31st in the nation for hospital safety, according to a new report by the Leapfrog Group, a national watchdog organization with a focus on healthcare safety.
According to the report, 23.3% of Oklahoma hospitals received an "A" grade, slightly worse off than Fall 2021, when the organization reported 24.4% of Oklahoma's hospitals received A's.
The report investigated patient safety and experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and found a general decrease in patient experience but significant variation in safety performance overall. It assigned letter grades to nearly 3,000 hospitals across the U.S. using 30 measures of patient safety and five measures of patient experience shown to directly tie in with patient safety outcomes.
"The health care workforce has faced unprecedented levels of pressure during the pandemic, and as a result, patients' experience with their care appears to have suffered," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group.
Binder called on hospital leadership to recommitt to improving care, particularly in communication and responsiveness, to improve patient safety outcomes.
Among the nearly 3,000 hospitals evaluated, 33% got an "A," 24% received a "B," 36% got a "C," 7% received a "D," and less than 1% received an "F," the report said.
The group used the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Hospital Survey to analyze patient experience. It found patients reported less favorably across all domains except one, quietness of the hospital. The authors said that may have been an unintended consequence of visitor restrictions during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The area of patient experience that received the least favorable responses even before the pandemic was care transition, which includes whether hospital staff take patients' preferences into account when deciding health care needs after leaving the hospital and if patients had a good understanding of their care transition and the purpose of their medications.
"Areas of patient experience that were already in dire need of improvement before the pandemic began, like transitioning care once out of the hospital, communicating about medications, and hospital staff responsiveness, worsened the most during the pandemic," the authors wrote in the report. "But regardless of the influence of the pandemic, significant challenges persist across all domains of patient experience, indicative of serious safety and quality problems that must be addressed."
via Oklahoma's Center Square News