UP Health System–Portage Will Not Receive Safety Grade

Hancock, Mich, April 24, 2018 – The Leapfrog Group, a Washington D.C-based organization aiming to improve health care quality and safety for consumers and purchasers, will not issue a Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade for UP Health System – Portage during its Spring 2018 update of national grades.

According to Leapfrog president and CEO Leah Binder, “Leapfrog graded fewer hospitals for Spring 2018 than in the past because of an unusual aberration in federal reporting of some of the data we use.” She said many of the omitted hospitals will be graded in the Fall 2018 round of grades, and added, “The fact that this hospital is not receiving a Safety Grade this spring is not related to the hospital’s safety record or any change in its performance.”

The data irregularity comes from reporting of Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs), measures issued by CMS, the agency that runs Medicare. The reporting period for the PSIs used in the Spring 2018 Safety Grades was 15 months instead of the usual 24 months due to this change from CMS, which resulted in hundreds of hospitals not meeting the minimum sample size for one or more PSIs. PSIs are a set of measures providing information on potential hospital complications and adverse events related to medical or surgical inpatient hospital care.

Developed under the guidance of a Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to approximately 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. It is peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public.