New health report card gives Monroe County hospitals mixed reviews

“I would expect every patient that's been treated at this hospital would be shocked at that data because what they experienced here and the care they got does not equate to the data that's on that website right now,” says Michael Stapleton, Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer at Lakeside Medical Center.

The 61-bed facility in Brockport was left with a black eye after a report card on New York Hospitals was released from the New York State Health Accountability Foundation. The foundation graded hospitals and insurance plans across New York State and New Jersey based on more than a dozen categories including length of hospital stay, mortality rates, patient safety and proper treatment.

Lakeside Hospital received failing grades in the following four overall categories:

surgical infection prevention, heart failure, heart attack care and pneumonia care.

However, Stapleton says the data used in the report is flawed for one reason; the data is from 2005-2006.

“I'm not arguing with the data, the data that's there is right, it's just the data is old. We have put numerous changes into place, everywhere from our processes to how we document to make sure we are capturing the right data.”

Among the changes is documentation.  Lakeside Hospital was following many of the guidelines but the work and discussions with patients were not being recorded properly.  Over the last year, Lakeside has taken corrective steps to improve the process.

“For example on our congestive heart failure patients, our discharge papers are tailored directly to that patient population,” says Stapleton who began working at Lakeside six months ago.

While Lakeside is a community-based hospital, it tracks its own patient care and safety data in addition to relying on an external data tracking service. Stapleton says by doing its own data collection, the hospital is able to respond to problems in “real-time” rather than rely on the results to be processed by an outside firm.
 

According to Lakeside’s most recent internal records on patient safety and care, the hospital has made dramatic improvements since the Health Accountability Foundation’s report card. From January 2007 to March 2007, the hospital scored

82% in pneumonia care, 83% in surgical infection prevention, 89% in heart failure treatment and 100% in overall heart attack care.

“We have gone up on every single score that we need to go up on. Are we perfect? No, but we're continuing to improve our processes and move forward,” says Stapleton.

Rochester General, Strong, Unity and Highland Hospital were also graded in the report card. Rochester General Hospital scored above average in all four categories (surgical infection prevention, heart failure, heart attack care and pneumonia care), Strong Memorial Hospital rated both above average and satisfactory scores in each area and Highland Hospital received both satisfactory and failing grades.

Highland Hospital’s failing grades came in the categories of pneumonia care and heart failure care. Representatives with Highland Hospital tell News 8 Now the grades were due to the same documentation problem as Lakeside Hospital.

“We are of course, disappointed by the marks,” says Dr. Richard Magnussen, associate medical director of Highland Hospital, “we have brought this to the attention of those who are doing the documentation and it is being corrected.”
 

Dr. Magnussen also stressed the age of the data used in the report card, saying it did represent current patient care at Highland Hospital.

“This report doesn’t really reflect the care that we give to our heart failure and pneumonia patients.”

You can view the complete report by visiting: www.nyshaf.org