Registered nurses Dee McDonald, seated, and Tillie Rossato check information on a computer at Dickinson County Healthcare System’s Family Birth Center in Iron Mountain. DCH and Dickinson County Memorial Hospital have again been recognized by a national watchdog organization for patient safety and maternity care. (Iron Mountain Daily News photo by Terri Castelaz)

IRON MOUNTAIN — Dickinson County Healthcare has received its fourth consecutive “A grade” in the Leapfrog hospital safety survey, making it among the most consistently recognized rural hospitals nationally for patient safety.

The letter grades are awarded by The Leapfrog Group, an independent hospital watchdog organization, and assigned to all hospitals across the country, assessing how well they prevent medical mistakes. An “A” is the highest grade awarded to hospitals for keeping patients safe from errors, injuries and infections.

Also, DCH is among only 17 hospitals in Michigan to receive the 2021 Maternity Care Excellence Award. The Economic Alliance for Michigan, a nonprofit group comprised of Michigan’s largest employers and unions, recognized DCH based on excellence and improvement in maternity care and delivery outcomes.

Data for the maternity award also comes from The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that aims to improve health care quality and safety for consumers and purchasers.

“Earning our fourth consecutive Leapfrog Patient Safety Award is a testament to the patient-focused performance of the DCH staff,” said Chuck Nelson, CEO of DCH. “The award also demonstrates the teams’ ability to consistently deliver the highest levels of health care to every patient, day in and day out. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is reassuring to know our protocols and systems deliver safety to our patients and staff. We provide care in a protected, welcoming, friendly environment, and our community can be confident that DCH is a safe place to come for their health care needs.”

Developed under the guidance of a national expert panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,700 U.S. acute care hospitals twice per year, in the fall and spring. The methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are accessible to the public.

For the past two years, and three of the previous four years, DCH has earned the EAM’s Maternity Care Excellence Award. DCH is the only Upper Peninsula hospital to be recognized.

“Successfully delivering the highest quality prenatal and infant care to our community is our OB/GYN team’s primary goal,” Nelson said. “The Maternity Care Excellence Award is based purely on data and patient outcomes. It is an accurate description of the care a pregnant mother and her family will receive at DCH. Our OB/GYN team has done an excellent job in successfully controlling the high-risk factors involved in pregnancy and delivering babies minimizing risk to both mother and child. Being the hospital that moms choose as the place where they want to give birth is the greatest compliment of all.”

The excellence award is part of EAM’s Maternity Care Project. Created in 2018, the project’s goals are to decrease the state’s infant mortality rate, reduce the rate of unnecessary C-sections, and be an educational resource for new and expecting parents residing in Michigan.

“The recipients of the Hospital Maternity Care Award demonstrate their dedication to giving newborns the best start to life,” said Bret Jackson, president of EAM. “Unnecessary cesarean sections and early elective deliveries are all linked to increased negative health outcomes and higher medical bills. These costs can be financially devastating to new parents and can trickle down to employers as well.”

For the award, hospitals are evaluated in four areas: cesarean rates, episiotomy rates, elective early delivery rates and maternity care processes.

DCH is a 49-bed community hospital with a team of more than 70 active providers, and each year treats more than 160,000 patients. It employs more than 700 staff members.