One survey lauds, other derides local hospital

By Bill Donovan

Correspondent

GALLUP, Nov. 21, 20189 — “You win some and lose some” may be all right when it comes to movie studios and how they view critics of their last film but it is definitely not the way officials for the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital feel when it comes to grades on patient safety.

Hospital officials learned last week

that on the same day a nationally recognized hospital rating service named it one of the 10 best hospitals in the country when it comes to patient safety, another rating service gave it an “F” for the same thing.

On Nov. 8, the Leapfrog Group published a list of 17 hospitals in the country that received an F in its 2018 hospital safety report.

RMCH was the only hospital in New Mexico to get an F. The news release did not state the criteria used in determining the grade scores, although other news stories about the survey said Leapfrog bases the grades on “performance in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms among patients in their care.”

Accurate survey?

David Conejo, CEO of the Gallup

hospital, said he didn’t take much stock

in the Leapfrog survey.

“We have explored the Leapfrog Group in the past and agreed at the time that (the hospital) did not have the volume of business to participate in their survey and therefore did not provide them with any information,” he said.

He added that he was concerned about the accuracy of the survey and had reached out to the company’s CEO, Leah Binder, but was not able to get in touch with her.

The Independent had the same result but a staffer there, when asked what they

used to grade hospitals that did not participate in the survey, said the Group had other sources of information, including data from the Centers for Disease Control and Medicare and Medicaid.

In a statement issued by the Group,officials said the hospital safety grade is based on “28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data” on more than 2,600 hospitals across the country. The survey is done twice a year.

‘Excellent rating’

Conejo pointed out that Health Grades, which is the second most prominent rating service outside of Medicaid, released its findings on the same day and after conducting a survey of data provided by the hospital, gave it an excellent rating.

In fact, this is the same grade it has received for the past five years and it was listed as the only hospital in New Mexico to get that rating five years in a row which is why it was placed on the list of this year’s 10 best hospitals.

RMCH is not the only hospital to question the Leapfrog’s rating system.

Surveys are ‘sometime flawed’

St. Anthony Hospital in Chicago filed a lawsuit against organization after getting a “C” rating in the fall 2017 survey. The hospital claimed in the suit, which is still in litigation, that the company used information that it knew was inadequate in determining the hospital’s grade.

Gallup city officials have been telling residents to be careful about reading too much into surveys of outside groups because they are sometime flawed.

City officials have questioned the surveys taken by RoadSnacks, which annually lists the 10 most dangerous cities in New Mexico to live in. Its latest survey ranks Gallup as the second most dangerous cities in the state based on data released by the FBI.

City officials have objected to the ranking, saying it is based on a population of 22,000 and doesn’t take into consideration that its market size is the same as that of a city of 100,000 or more. If that was considered, Gallup’s ranking would be significantly lower, according to city officials.

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