California Hospitals Lose Ground in Quality of Care, Report Card Shows
Some hospital industry officials have criticized Leapfrog’s letter grades as too simplistic for a complex issue and as potentially misleading for patients.
Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, noted there are many different scorecards and said consumers shouldn’t put too much stock in any one ranking.
“While these scorecards often serve as a good starting point for patients to ask questions of their health-care provider, they should not be viewed as being a definitive source for determining the quality of care provided by any hospital,” Emerson-Shea said.
The Leapfrog data show that some of the top performers in California include Chinese Hospital in San Francisco, Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and Inglewood’s Centinela Hospital Medical Center.
Health giant Kaiser Permanente consistently posts some of the highest scores and shows little variation across its 35 hospitals in the state. Thirty-three Kaiser hospitals received A or B grades; two got C grades.
The University of California health system fared well across seven hospital campuses, with five A ratings and two B grades.
Some large institutions lagged further behind. Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank received a D, as did the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
Leapfrog cited San Francisco General, a public safety net hospital, for being below average at preventing surgical site infections after colon surgery and for allowing dangerous objects to be left in a patient’s body, among other factors. Providence’s Burbank hospital had a higher-than-expected rate of patients who developed serious breathing problems and caught antibiotic-resistant infections, according to Leapfrog.
A spokesman for San Francisco General didn’t comment directly on the hospital’s results, other than to say it didn’t participate in Leapfrog’s optional survey on safety procedures and training.
Providence said in a statement it takes patient safety seriously and respects efforts to help consumers make an informed choice. However, “it is important to understand that health care data are extremely difficult to compare as each patient is unique,” the hospital said. “Often information is a few years old before it is analyzed and aggregated for the public.”
A full list of California hospitals and their scores is available here.
California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development also offers data on hospital quality and patient outcomes. And Medicare posts star ratings for hospitals nationwide, which are another resource for patients and policymakers.