Iowa’s hospitals rank in the bottom half of the national pack on a new report card based on medical errors and other problems.
Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, says the 2017 Hospital Safety Grade Report surveyed more than 2,600 hospitals nationwide, including 33 facilities in Iowa. The grades were given based on medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections.
“The bad things that you never want to see happen in a hospital, but they do happen,” Binder says. “About 500 people a day die from these preventable errors. It’s a very serious issue and we believe every American deserves information before they’re admitted to a hospital on how well that hospital is doing.” Iowa has fallen ten places in the survey over the past several years.
“Iowa is ranked 33rd in the country,” Binder says. “They have about 27% of their hospitals earning an A. That’s not so great. Nationally, the average is about a third of hospitals get an A so they are still not there.” Binder says Iowa’s drop in the rankings is a concern.
“Unfortunately, they’ve gotten worse,” Binder says. “They used to be, back when we started doing this five years ago, they were ranked 23rd in the country. They’re kind of slipping unfortunately.”
Of the 33 hospitals graded in Iowa, nine received an A, ten got Bs, 13 were given Cs, while there was one D for UnityPoint Health – St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center of Sioux City. The nine As were given to hospitals in: Cedar Rapids, Clinton, Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Dubuque, Newton, Spencer, Spirit Lake and Waterloo.
See the full report at: hospitalsafetygrade.org.