WESTFIELD–Baystate Noble Hospital, along with 30 other hospitals in Massachusetts, was recently awarded the highest safety grade possible from the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade Program.
The program, which rated over 2,600 hospitals nationwide, grades hospitals with intensive care units on 30 measures, then provides a letter score of A through F to determine their safety levels for patients and healthcare providers. This year, Noble Hospital received the “A” rating, which is the highest rating possible.
Dr. Thomas Higgins
“I think it’s also important to the people of Westfield that they know they can come to their local hospital and get top notch care,” Dr. Tom Higgins, chief medical officer of Noble Hospital, said. “And I think that’s important in light of events a couple years ago regarding the colonoscopy issue.”
The colonoscopy issue was related to improperly sterilized equipment that were used in colonoscopies between 2012 and 2013. Earlier this year, 25 people sued the hospital for risk of infection related to the improperly sterilized equipment.
Higgins said that the “A” score from Leapfrog acknowledges the hospital’s and staff’s work to improve safety and conditions, while focusing on principles.
“It recognizes the hard work the employees and physicians have put into the four compass points of medical care, safety, quality, medical experience and value, and the Leapfrog score recognizes those four things,” he said.
Among the 30 different areas of safety measures, Leapfrog takes into account physicians’ use of computerized charting and ordering, hand sanitization and cleanliness, intensive care unit (ICU) physician staffing and culture and teamwork within the hospital.
Noble Hospital
Higgins said that these are all areas where Noble succeeds, but the especially impressive part is having adequate ICU staffing. Noble Hospital is what is known as a community hospital, which generally means that there is less staffing and lower volume of patients, and specialty cases may not be fully treated there.
Noble’s ICU, Higgins said, has one full-time intensivist, or intensive care doctor, as well as several on call. The only shortfall in this portion of scoring, Higgins said, was that they do not have around-the-clock intensive care physicians.
“It’s very difficult for a community hospital to score well on this,”Higgins said.
Overall, Massachusetts ranked seventh in the nation for their hospitals’ Leapfrog scores, and 31 of the 60 evaluated received A grades. The other local hospitals to receive A grades were Baystate Franklin Medical Center, Berkshire Medical Center, Holyoke Medical Center and Heywood Medical Center in Gardner. Rounding out the rest of the list were Mercy Medical Center, Baystate Medical Center and Cooley-Dickinson Medical Center, which each received B grades.
