St. Petersburg's Bayfront hospital earns first ever A grade for safety
When Orlando Health purchased St. Petersburg's flagship hospital in 2020, Bayfront was struggling.
Nurses unions reported understaffing and equipment shortages that reportedly had led to high infection rates and unnecessary deaths. The 480-bed hospital had a D ranking for safety.
Five years on, hospital leaders are celebrating Bayfront's first ever A grade in new rankings released by Leapfrog, a nonprofit that rates hospitals nationwide on number of infections and medical errors. They gathered at the hospital at midnight Wednesday to celebrate with night shift workers.
'The team has been working so hard for a number of years,' said Jim Tucker, chief quality officer. 'People are thrilled to be celebrating today. It means everything.'
Most of the region's other larger hospitals, including St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater and St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, also received an A grade.
But Tampa General Hospital received its fourth straight C rating despite assurances from hospital leaders that its grade would improve.
Hospital officials, however, point to the hospital's improved performance in a new ranking that placed it in the top 30% of academic medical centers in the nation. It was ranked in the 81st percentile of its peers in 2017.
The ranking, conducted by Vizient, is more significant since it compares Tampa General to hospitals of similar size and complexity, including NYU Langone, Mass General Brigham and Vanderbilt University, officials said.
'With technology, innovation and exceptional talent, Tampa General is continuously working to elevate quality, enhance safety and improve patient outcomes,' John Couris, hospital president and CEO, said in a statement.
Ten of 11 BayCare Health System hospitals that were rated received an A.
But the grade for HCA Florida Brandon Regional hospital dropped to a B with MRSA infections and the number of collapsed lungs flagged as areas of concern.
Eighteen of AdventhHealth's 26 Florida hospitals received an A grade. AdventHealth Tampa, the nonprofit's largest hospital in the Tampa Bay region, slipped from a B to a C after scoring below average for the number of blood and urinary tract infections.
The first ever A for Bayfront comes after significant investment in the hospital by Orlando Health. The hospital has a new ambulance bay expanding the number of ambulances that can be accommodated to 13. There is also new medical pavilions being constructed on campus.
Equipment in operating rooms, the labor and delivery department and the baby unit has also been upgraded. Surgical equipment used for neuro and orthopedic surgery has been replaced, new imaging equipment was purchased and sterile processing equipment improved.
The company also had to change the culture, said Tucker, who joined shortly before Orlando Health took over. Up until then, there were clearly challenges to address, including the number of infections in patients who had vascular catheters, also known as central lines, he said.
Now. there is an increased focus on minimizing the time that a patient is catheterized to reduce the likelihood of infections. The hospital has also been more successful at retaining nurses and surveys staff for ideas on how to keep improving safety.
'It's a never ending journey,' Tucker said. 'It's an infusion into the organization that has really helped us and will continue.'
Leapfrog has been rating and assessing hospitals for more than a decade in an effort to reduce deaths and injuries from hospital errors by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm.
Twice a year it grades more than 3,000 acute-care hospitals across the U.S. twice a year on how well they keep patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors, using more than 30 performance measures that hospitals report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
But the nonprofit has been accused by a Palm Beach hospital operator of running a 'brazen pay-to-play scheme' publishing rankings that are 'false, wildly inaccurate, and defamatory.' Leapfrog charges hospitals between $6,700 and $29,900 per year to advertise their safety grade.
In a lawsuit filed this week in federal court, Palm Beach Health Network claimed that the grades awarded for 20% of hospitals that refuse to participate with Leapfrog are inaccurate and that the rating system punishes hospitals who decline to provide Leapfrog's safety survey.
The legal challenge names five of its hospitals — Delray Medical Center, Good Samaritan Medical Center, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, West Boca Medical Center and St. Mary's Medical Center — as victims of the rating system:
Leapfrog officials defended their rating system and said they provide important information that the public deserves to know.
'When we look at these hospitals' results from Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, we see preventable suffering and death far exceeding the national average,' said Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder in a statement. 'Instead of using their resources to file frivolous lawsuits, they should be improving how their patients are treated.'
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