The hospital raised its patient safety score from a ‘D’ to a ‘B’ in a single year, making it one of the best in the county.
AdventHealth Ocala has earned a “B” in patient safety from the prestigious Leapfrog Group. AdventHealth acquired the hospital in August 2018 and made a promise to Ocala and Marion County to transform and elevate the quality of care to the community. In that timeframe, patient safety grades rose from a ‘D’ to a ‘B,’ showing the hospital does a better job at protecting patients from mistakes, injuries, accidents and infections than it did previously. The score is from the Leapfrog group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization, focused on safety ratings for more than 2,600 hospitals across the country. The group assigns letter grades of A, B, C, D and F based on how well hospitals perform in patient safety.
“Since acquiring the hospital in 2018, we have been on a journey to providing the best medical care possible, and it is thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team that we are able to achieve this success in such a short amount of time,” said Joe Johnson, President and CEO of AdventHealth Ocala. “This is just the beginning, we still have an ‘A’ as our goal.”
Leaders at AdventHealth Ocala implemented a list of changes to enhance patient safety, including:
- Deploying over 600 new IV pumps and over 80 teleboxes which allow care teams to monitor patients and medications in real time - significantly decreasing medication errors to patients.
- Implementing electronic health records which allow physicians to place the patient medication orders directly into the computer and allows nurses to scan a patient’s medications prior to administering medications – which has been shown to significantly decrease medication errors to patients.
- Renovating the emergency room to provide all private patient rooms to decrease infection rates and offer complete privacy during care.
- Reinstating safety huddles each morning to ensure all departments are informed of hospital and patient needs each day.
- Training over 2,000 team members on a change in culture to enhance how team members care for patients and each other.
“How we care for our community makes a difference and you see it in the scores,” said Imelda Unto, Chief Nursing Officer of AdventHealth Ocala. “We implemented several key strategies to improve patient safety, reduce infections and create a culture of safety to make sure we are providing the best care possible to every patient, every time. Thanks to our dedicated administrators and care team members, we can continue to create a high quality, safe environment for anyone needing our care.”
AdventHealth Ocala has committed to investing over $124 million in renovation, expansion, and upgrades to technology to provide world-class care in Marion County and the surrounding communities.
Patient safety is the top priority at all AdventHealth locations. This year, all participating hospitals in the West Florida Division received either an ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade from the Leapfrog Safety Group. AdventHealth voluntarily participates in the Leapfrog assessment and provides full transparency to our hospitals and our data to patient safety experts for review. To see a full list of safety grades, click here.