Leapfrog Group: PBMC gets a ‘D’ on hospital safety report card

Peconic Bay Medical Center has been slapped with a hospital safety score of  D by a national hospital ratings company.

The Leapfrog Group, which conducts voluntary surveys of U.S. hospitals twice a year, dropped PBMC from a C to a D in its spring 2015 report, which was issued yesterday.

“Like many hospitals, PBMC did not participate in the survey,” hospital president and CEO Andrew Mitchell said this morning.

In the absence of participation by a hospital, the organization uses publicly reported data sources to grade a hospital based on 28 measures designed to evaluate hospital safety practices and procedures, according to Leapfrog’s website.

PBMC scored below average in specific measures under four of the five areas rated by Leapfrog: safety problems with surgery; staff follows steps to make surgery safer; infections and safety problems; and the right staffing to prevent safety problems. There was no data available for the fifth area, which pertained to use of “standard safety procedures.”

In the “right staffing” area, there was no data for four of the five measures, because PBMC did not participate in the survey. In the fifth area, “Specially trained doctors care for ICU patients,” the hospital was rated below average for not having “intensivists,” physicians with advanced training in intensive or critical care, staffing its intensive care unit.

“We have three intensivists covering the ICU 24/7,” Mitchell said. He said the hospital is investigating other apparent discrepancies in the data used by Leapfrog.

Leapfrog’s safety score has been criticized by the American Hospitals Association, which cited “methodological shortcomings” in the survey, including “an unfair bias toward responding to the survey, the use of unreliable measures, significant variation in the weights applied to measures for different groups of hospitals, and significant errors in the data.”

Leapfrog, which began issuing the safety report cards in 2012, defended its methodology and denied the accusations.

According to Leapfrog’s spring 2015 report card, PBMC came up short on measures such as the use of antibiotics right before surgery, removing a catheter soon after surgery and taking steps to prevent blood clots.

Overall, the Riverhead hospital scored above average on seven measures of patient safety, below average on 10 of them, and average on one.

PBMC was the only hospital on Long Island to score below a C. Across the area, Southampton Hospital got a C, while Eastern Long Island Hospital was not rated. Mather and St.Charles both got As, while Stony Brook got a B. Brookhaven was not rated. (Hospitals are not rated when they do not respond to the survey and do not provide enough publicly available data to meet Leapfrog’s criteria for issuing a score, according to the group.)

“There are many consumer rating agencies and no grading system is comprehensive so consumers should consult multiple sources,” PBMC said in a written statement, noting it scored in the top 20 percent for patient safety among N.Y. hospitals in a 2014 Consumer Reports ranking.

“We are constantly and proactively addressing patient safety throughout Peconic Bay Medical Center,” the hospital said. “We have already identified the areas for improvement, have initiated changes and we would expect our efforts to reflect in an improved score in the future.”