South County Hospital loses its "A" rating for patient safety

This is on management's heads

By Will Collette

South County Hospital was once the jewel in the crown of Rhode Island health care, consistently topping the charts that rated hospitals.

But that's no longer the case. South County Hospital's safety grade has dropped to a "B," putting in the bottom ranks among Rhode Island hospitals.

In contrast, the following hospitals scored an A:

• Newport Hospital, Newport
• The Miriam Hospital, Providence
• Landmark Medical Center, Woonsocket
• Rhode Island Hospital, Providence
• Westerly Hospital, Westerly.

For many years, South County received "A" ratings from the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade for patient safety. That's a very important metric since it measures your chances of leaving the hospital alive. Anything less than an A is simply not good enough.

What changed? Management. 

CEO Aaron Robinson, who assumed leadership in 2020, earns around a million dollars and seems more concerned with saving his job than saving patients' lives. 

He and his captive hospital board are actually suing critics of his management practices in a nearly unheard-of SLAPP suit against the group Save South County Hospital.

It gets worse when you look at the various criteria. The ratings show that hospital staff are not to blame.

South County's score in this category was 120 points out of 120

South County Hospital staff also scored highly for "Practices to Prevent Errors:"

That's the good news. The bad news comes when you closer at the rest of the criteria and scores for patient safety.

Infections

South County Hospital's problems are even worse than the table below shows. The footnotes red-line SCH's response to the request for MRSA infection data with this: 1. Declined to Report: The hospital was asked to provide this information to the public, but did not. Data on blood infections was also "not available."

Surgical problems

SCH apparently could not or would not report on deaths from treatable complications. The three red-lined categories are disturbing: blood leakage, kidney damage and accidental cuts and tears.

Safety problems

In this category, two items are red-lined while only two of the seven items are in the green. 

One of them, "harmful events," is described by Leapfrog this way: "Patients can experience complications and potentially harmful events following a surgery, a procedure, or childbirth."

The red-lined score for "collapsed lung" was personally chilling since I sent four days in SCH for pneumonia in 2023. I had a great experience with a good outcome, largely due to the excellent staff. 

To be clear, I love South County Hospital and my relationship with them stretches back 50 years to my friendship with their long-time CEO, the late Donald Ford. I want them to succeed and thrive and regain their top ranking once again.

As a first step, they need to drop their frivolous harassment suit against Save South County Hospital. They should be talking and listening to critics, not suing them. Can SCH achieve a turn-around under CEO Aaron Robinson? I doubt it, but Robinson's leadership is an issue that needs to be negotiated in good faith.

Hospitals can be turned around. Westerly Hospital suffered poor ratings and nearly went out of business. Now, as part of the Yale-New Haven Hospital system, they seem to be thriving with ratings to prove it. 

Just in the past month, I had two operations to remove cataracts at Westerly Hospital and was impressed at their quality of care. If Westerly Hospital can change, there is certainly hope for South County Hospital.