All BayCare Acute-Care Hospitals Earn Top Score for Patient Safety

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Nov 06, 2023, 11:13 ET

CLEARWATER, Fla., Nov. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization that promotes patient safety, announced its Fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grades today, and all eligible BayCare acute-care hospitals received an "A," the group's highest rating.

The Leapfrog Group collects and analyzes data about infections, accidents, injuries, and errors at nearly 3,000 general hospitals. In the spring and fall, the Leapfrog Group assigns them letter grades ranging from "A" to "F" and releases those grades publicly.

These are the hospitals that earned an "A" from Leapfrog:

Bartow Regional Medical Center
Mease Countryside Hospital, Safety Harbor
Mease Dunedin Hospital
Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater
Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, New Port Richey
St. Anthony's Hospital, St. Petersburg
St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa
St. Joseph's Hospital-North, Lutz
St. Joseph's Hospital-South, Riverview
South Florida Baptist Hospital, Plant City
Winter Haven Hospital

BayCare Alliant Hospital, St. Joseph's Children's Hospital, St. Joseph's Women's Hospital and Winter Haven Women's Hospital are not given safety grades because the Leapfrog Group focuses on general, acute-care hospitals. Additionally, BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel does not have a grade because it opened in March 2023, so there is not enough data for it to have a grade yet.

"This is a tremendous accomplishment – it is exceedingly rare for all the eligible hospitals within an organization as large as ours to achieve all As," said Dr. Laura Arline, BayCare's chief quality officer. "This achievement underscores that Quality serves as BayCare's true north and demonstrates our deep, unwavering commitment to patient safety. Thank you to our extraordinary team members, medical staff and leadership for continuing to put safety first."

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is a composite score that is comprised of the following:

More than 30 national performance measures collected and reported publicly by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
The Leapfrog Hospital Survey
Information gathered from other supplemental data sources

About BayCare

BayCare is a leading not-for-profit health care system that connects individuals and families to a wide range of services at 16 hospitals and hundreds of other convenient locations throughout the Tampa Bay and central Florida regions. The system is West Central Florida's largest provider of behavioral health and pediatric services and its provider group, BayCare Medical Group, is one of the largest in the region. BayCare's diverse network of ambulatory services includes laboratories, imaging, surgical centers, BayCare Urgent Care locations, wellness centers and one of Florida's largest home care agencies, BayCare HomeCare. Its Medicare Advantage insurance, BayCarePlus, is among the region's few 5-star-rated plans and the system is ranked in the top 20% by Fortune/Merative. BayCare's mission is to improve the health of all it serves through community-owned, health care services that set the standard for high-quality, compassionate care. For more information visit BayCare.org.

SOURCE BayCare Health System