2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades: Michigan ranks 5th overall in nation with large number of ‘A’ hospitals

Michigan hospitals performed well in the spring 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades.* The state ranked 5th overall in the nation with 50.60% of participating hospitals receiving an “A” grade.

Leapfrog is an independent, national nonprofit organization founded more than 20 years ago by the nation’s leading employers and private health care experts. Its focus is on measuring and publicly reporting hospital performance through the Leapfrog Hospital Survey.

“It’s very gratifying to see the increases Michigan hospitals are making in Leapfrog scores,” said James Grant, M.D, senior vice president and chief medical officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. “Michigan hospitals and physicians have a rich history of collaborating on important statewide quality improvement needs through the CQI portfolio. These collaborations have increased the ability of Michigan providers to work with their partners across the health system to transform care for the betterment of patients.”

Collaborative Quality Initiatives, or CQIs, part of Value Partnerships, address many of the most common and costly areas of surgical and medical care in Michigan. Tom Leyden, director of Value Partnerships, explained that for each CQI, hospitals and physicians across the state collect, share and analyze data on patient risk factors, processes of care and outcomes of care, then design and implement changes to improve care.

With the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, grades A through F are assigned to nearly 3,000 general acute-care hospitals across the nation twice annually (fall and spring), representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. Hospitals self-report a portion of the data and Leapfrog gathers publicly available data, but not all hospitals participate in self-reporting.

How Michigan hospitals fared

From the fall 2021 grades to the spring 2022 grades, 10 hospitals improved from a B to an A and one hospital jumped from a C to an A.

“We are encouraged by these improvements,” said Steve Anderson, vice president, Hospital Contracting and Network Administration. “They illustrate Michigan hospitals’ continuing commitment to quality despite the many challenges they’ve faced over the past two years, including COVID-19 and staffing issues.”

The following are the spring 2022 grades for Michigan hospitals.

• A – 40 hospitals
• B – 21 hospitals
• C – 16 hospitals
• D – 1 hospital

Michigan’s state ranking jumped from 10th overall in fall 2021 to 5th overall in spring 2022.

Blue Cross rewards good grades

For Michigan hospitals that participate in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Pay-for- Performance program, a good grade in the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades can mean some extra incentive money. A good grade (a “C” or better) is one factor Blue Cross uses when determining how to distribute any remaining incentive funds.

Blue Cross encourages both patient safety and quality care through value-based contracting and its Pay-for-Performance programs. With its Pay-for-Performance programs, Blue Cross rewards hospitals for improving quality, cost efficiency and population health. These programs recognize both mid-to-large and small rural short-term acute care hospitals with a focus on patient safety as well as quality improvements. Through value-based contracting, hospitals work with physicians to provide cost-efficient care for a shared patient population, and earn rewards based on improved outcomes across that population.

Blue Cross also provides hospitals with resources to improve patient safety, including quarterly reports.

How grades are assigned

Leapfrog uses national performance measures from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and other supplemental data sources to produce a single letter grade. The public can access the data on the Leapfrog website to find hospitals that meet their needs.

It uses 30 publicly available hospital safety measures, selected by an expert panel of national patient safety experts. For the spring grades, for the first time, the patient safety measures included post-operative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury.

Changes for fall 2022

Leapfrog is planning updates to the methodology* that will be used to calculate the fall 2022 grades.

One change is the scoring on the hand hygiene measure. For more information, click here.*

Another proposed change is that the fall 2022 “courtesy review period” will last two, rather than three, weeks. At the time this article was written, the anticipated dates were Sept. 19, 2022, through Sept. 30, 2022. During this time, hospitals can review their data for accuracy on a secure website, review the fall 2022 Safety Grade methodology and access the fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grade calculator.

Leapfrog is also planning to change its policy on CMS Footnote 23. Beginning this fall, Leapfrog will contact hospitals directly if footnote 23 is present for any one of the CMS claims-based measures used to calculate the Hospital Safety Grade before the close of the review period. Hospital CEOs will have until the end of the review period to submit written permission to use the measure score. If written permission isn’t received, the measure won’t be used.

*Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan doesn’t own or control this website.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are nonprofit corporations and independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.