Lee Health Receives National Recognitions for Exceptional Patient Care

From Dr. Stephanie Stovall, Lee Health’s Interim Chief of Quality and Patient Safety

With patient safety and high-quality care as top priorities for Lee Health, I am proud to announce that our hospitals continue to earn national recognitions for the exceptional care we provide.

The Leapfrog Group recently released its Spring 2021 Hospital Safety Grades, awarding Cape Coral Hospital, Gulf Coast Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital each “A” grades for the fifth straight reporting period. HealthPark Medical Center earned an “A” grade for the fourth straight reporting period. That’s the highest national mark they award and only 33% of the approximately 2,700 acute care hospitals Leapfrog graded received an “A.” (Children’s hospitals are not included in The Leapfrog Group’s Spring grades, but Golisano Children’s Hospital has been named as a Top Children’s Hospital by The Leapfrog Group four times.)

Developed under the guidance of a national expert panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to hospitals twice per year. The Leapfrog Group’s grading system is peer-reviewed, fully transparent, and free to the public. The Safety Grade assigns letter grades of “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” and “F” to hospitals across the country based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections, and other harms.

The “A” grades Lee Health hospitals received speak to the kind of care patients can expect in our facilities, and they are a result of the entire Lee Health team’s dedication to providing the safest and highest quality of care.

Shortly after The Leapfrog Group released its scores, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its star ratings, awarding four stars to Lee Health hospitals. Cape Coral Hospital, HealthPark Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital have all risen from three stars in the 2020 rating period to four stars in this period, and Gulf Coast Medical Center has maintained its four-star status. Like The Leapfrog Group’s ranking system, children’s hospitals are not included.

CMS’s overall star rating is based on how well a hospital performs across different areas of quality, such as treating heart attacks and pneumonia, readmission rates and safety of care. The rating shows how individual hospitals perform compared to all hospitals across the country for the 5 groups or categories of quality measures that make up for the overall star rating.

The four-star ratings from CMS reflect the continuous improvements Lee Health strives for to provide the highest quality of care to the community it serves. In the past four years, all Lee Health hospitals have risen from two-stars to four-stars by finding ways to constantly improve patient care, and we’re proud to be recognized for this.

Being awarded four stars by CMS and given a “A” grade for our hospitals by The Leapfrog Group is an honor. I want to thank the entire Lee Health team for their dedication to excellent patient care. I can’t thank them enough for all they do, and I am proud to work alongside of them.

At Lee Health, we are committed to constant improvement and we’re always striving to provide the safest, highest level of care possible to the Southwest Florida community.