Ludington hospital receives top ratings for safety and quality.

Ludington hospital receives top ratings for safety and quality.

LUDINGTON — Spectrum Health Ludington Hospital recently was cited as among the top hospitals in the state of Michigan with an “A” grade from The Leapfrog Group, an organization that analyzes hospital safety and quality and scores them based on their rankings against key hospital safety indicators. The Ludington Hospital was one of only 19 Michigan hospitals to achieve an A rating, and it was the fourth consecutive A rating the hospital has received from The Leapfrog Group.

Healthgrades, another national organization that rates hospital care based on safety and quality measures, has also just named Spectrum Health Ludington Hospital as a top scoring organization, with 5-star ratings in treatment of stroke care, treatment of pneumonia and a Patient Safety Excellence Award. Healthgrades evaluated nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 34 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions and identified top-performing hospitals across these measures of care.

Randy Kelley, president of Spectrum Health Ludington Hospital said he is pleased that the Ludington Hospital has gotten its fourth consecutive “A” rating from Leapfrog and is especially proud of the Patient Safety Excellence Award from Healthgrades.

“Quality medical care and patient safety are at the heart of what we do every day,” Kelley said. “We have evidence of this in our daily work processes, our policies and procedures that guide our care flows, and in the work going on in every department of the hospital to manage daily improvement. It’s nice to have two independent rating organizations verify that we are providing safe and effective care for our communities.”

“Along the lakeshore, from Traverse City to Grand Haven, Spectrum Health Ludington Hospital is the only hospital with an ‘A’ rating from The Leapfrog Group,” said Helen Johnson, chief nursing officer. “I’m proud of the work our clinical staff does every day to keep patients safe and to provide quality care.”

Leapfrog assigns grades of A, B, C, D, and F to general acute-care hospitals based on avoidable hospital errors and infections, which are the third leading cause of death in America. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. It is updated every six months, once in the fall and once in the spring. Information about the safety grade, as well as individual hospital grades and state rankings can be found at www.hospitalsafetygrade.org.

Healthgrades recognizes a hospital’s quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5-star (statistically significantly better than expected), 3-star (not statistically different from expected) and 1-star (statistically significantly worse than expected) categories. The complete “Healthgrades 2018 Report to the Nation” and detailed study methodology can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality.

This story was submitted by Spectrum Health Ludington Hospital.