North Jersey hospitals show safety improvements, says watchdog study
New Jersey hospitals, hampered by a staffing and supply shortage during the pandemic, improved their safety scores this fall, according to a report released Tuesday by a watchdog group.
The Garden State had the sixth-highest percentage of A ratings in the nation, according to the Leapfrog Group's hospital safety grades, including four in Bergen County and one in Passaic County. This fall, 47% of New Jersey hospitals earned the top grade, up from 43.5% in spring 2022, when the state ranked 12th.
"In New Jersey, in this half of the year, we see improvements in the data," said Adelisa Perez-Hudgins, director of quality for the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, an advocacy group that partners with Leapfrog. "We are not back to pre-pandemic quality, but we are heading in the right direction.”
The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of employers and other health care purchasers that publishes data twice a year from the nation's hospitals to spotlight safety measures and keep avoidable costs under control.
Its grades are determined by more than 30 national performance measures, from patient surveys about how well they understood directions to doctors and nurses to patient safety practices. Leapfrog publishes its results on the organization's website, giving consumers a chance to see how well their hospital performs.
New Jersey is the only state in which more than 95% of hospitals participated in the survey — perhaps indicating that administrators in the state take the group's assessments seriously.
Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus, Englewood Health hospital, Hackensack University Medical Center, Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood, The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and St. Mary's General Hospital in Passaic all scored A grades for fall 2022.
Meanwhile, Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville earned a B rating, whereas Mountainside Medical Center in Montclair and Holy Name hospital in Teaneck earned C ratings.
Although no hospitals in the state earned the lowest F rating in the fall 2022 study, two of the lowest-rated hospitals in the state were St. Joseph's University Medical Center in Paterson and its Wayne campus, which both earned D ratings.
Furthermore, both St. Joseph's locations had fallen from their C ratings in spring 2021. Mountainside and Holy Name had also declined from B ratings in spring 2021. Conversely, Hackensack University Medical Center and St. Mary's both improved from their previous B ratings, while Englewood and Clara Maass held steady.
In the case of St. Joseph's Paterson campus, the hospital scored the second-lowest of four possible ratings (ranging from "achieved the standard" to "limited achievement") on specific factors including the number of post-operation infections, colon infections, blood infections and "limited achievement" in first-time mothers giving birth by cesarean operations, as well as the overall experience for child patients and their parents and doses of radiation received during CT scans in pediatric patients' abdomens.
It also received "limited achievement" assessments for the number of several complex procedures performed in a given period, ensuring that each professional performs a certain number as an individual, including surgeries to treat artery disease, replacing or repairing a patient's mitral valve and esophageal cancer removal.
However, St. Joseph's Paterson showed "considerable achievement" in aortic and weight loss procedures.
The hospital's Wayne campus also rated poorly in preventing post-surgical infections, as well as blood, colon and urinary tract infections. But was rated highly in preventing blood leakage, the reopening of post-surgical wounds and instances of surgeons leaving dangerous objects inside a patient's body.
One of the area's biggest turnarounds was for Bergen New Bridge Medical Center, which rebranded from Bergen Regional Medical Center in 2017, after the county-run hospital was beleaguered by allegations that patients assaulted hospital workers and even two accusations of sexual assaults against children.
But due to the name change, Leapfrog's ratings for the hospital are not available before fall 2021, when it also received an A grade. It did score poorly for complications after colon surgery, urinary tract infections and the overall experience for patients undergoing elective surgeries.
Likewise, multiple factors were deemed not to apply, including resections for esophageal, lung and pancreatic cancers.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey hospitals show improvements in watchdog study
