Lee Health Hospitals Earn Top Grade for Safety

Dec. 7, 2022

Lee Health was very pleased to receive notification that Cape Coral Hospital, Gulf Coast Medical Center, HealthPark Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital achieved the highest honor of an “A” from The Leapfrog Group for their Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades.

These grades are determined using national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and other data sources. To determine the letter grade, an expert panel takes more than 20 measures into account. The assigned letter grade represents a hospital’s performance in keeping patients safe from medical errors and preventable harm. The grading system is peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public at www.HospitalSafetyGrade.org.

The website goes into more detail about how The Leapfrog Group produces the Safety Grade. As President & CEO and a former practicing obstetrician/gynecologist, I know these grades reflect collaboration and a shared commitment to delivering the highest quality, safe care every day and night. Teams throughout our hospitals utilize our internal safety tools, keeping a safety mindset and building trust with each other and our patients helped us earn these grades.

These top marks are well-deserved in our adult hospitals, and while children’s hospitals are not included in The Leapfrog Group’s fall grades, the group has named Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida a Top Children’s Hospital four times.

Cape Coral Hospital also earned additional recognition when it was included on Leapfrog and the Money Group’s list of the Best Hospitals for Maternity Care in the country. To be eligible for inclusion on this list, which can be found at https://money.com/best-hospitals/maternity/, hospitals had to earn an “A” or “B” letter grade for the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades and meet specific criteria, including but not limited to:

• Having less than 5% of deliveries before 39 weeks for no medical reason
• A cesarean section (C-section) birth rate lower than the national benchmark of 23.6% – Cape Coral Hospital had a C-section rate of 13.8%
• An episiotomy benchmark less than 5%
• Screening for bilirubin in more than 90% of newborns

Congratulations to Cape Coral Hospital for being one of 259 hospitals included on the list, and thank you to the teams who work so well together to deliver the safest, highest quality maternity care.

On behalf of all of us at Lee Health, it is our honor and privilege to care for our families, friends and neighbors throughout Southwest Florida, and we are proud to be recognized for the safety of the care we provide.