News Photo by Mike Gonzalez MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena President Mike Erickson works at his desk in the hospital on Wednesday. The Alpena hospital scored an A in a safety survey this spring from Washington-based hospital watchdog group Leapfrog.

ALPENA — MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena scored an A in a safety survey this spring from Washington-based hospital watchdog group Leapfrog.

That’s the Alpena hospital’s second time in a row receiving an A for the safety survey, a vast improvement over the spring 2023 grade Leapfrog gave the hospital when it received a C.

According to Leapfrog, MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena achieved the highest score for having nurse staffing plans to ensure there are enough registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and assistive personnel providing direct care to patients in medical, surgical, or other units each day.

Mike Erickson, Alpena hospital president, said the higher number of staff is all thanks to the hospital’s connection with Alpena Community College in which many medical programs between the partners have brought in more workers.

“I really attribute a lot of that to our relationship that we developed with ACC, and our intent is to open up another wing for these classes by the end of the calendar year,” Erickson said. “We’re very proud of getting two A’s in a row and that’s, again, credit to all the hard work this team has done in the past couple of years. With almost 1,000 people that work here, it takes a village.”

In the Leapfrog score, there was a low score for specially trained doctors for intensive care unit patients, but Erickson said that scores should go higher with a new program MyMichigan is using later on.

Leapfrog scores look at the results of hospitals from 18 to 24 months ago, so the grade that is seen would stem from past work and not current practices.

Erickson said the hospital did not have intensivists to treat ICU patients, and it still doesn’t, but virtual care has allowed ICU specialists to come in and help patients without ever stepping foot in the Alpena hospital.

“In the past, we didn’t have intensivists and we still don’t have intensivists here, but what we’ve developed with MyMichigan systems is we now can dial into Alma or Midland, and their intensivists are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Erickson said. “Some of my hospitalists have an additional year of, or additional training, in intensive care, yet they’re not intensivists. So, when they’re caring for someone and they have a question, they pick up the phone and they can do a video consult down in Midland with an intensivist dialed right in.”

The Alpena hospital’s best-scored category this spring was in the hospital’s practices to prevent errors, with all six practices ranking above average.

The six practices include things such as handwashing, communication about medicines and discharge, safe medication administration, and more. Last fall, the hospital received similar scores in that category.

Dr. Paul Berg, chief medical officer of MyMichigan Health, the Midland-based owner of the Alpena hospital, said the organization has also worked on preventing problems with patients during treatment.

“Our Medical Center teams work incredibly hard to prevent complications and infections in our patients,” Berg said in a statement. “We have constant surveillance for patients who are high risk for developing these. Achieving high grades reflects the results of hardwiring patient safety into our daily work and maintaining constant focus by our teams every day to provide patients the best care.”

Even with the focus, MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena received mostly average scores in the safety problems category, with higher graded marks with prevention of patients falling and air or gas bubbles in the blood.

The infections category also saw mostly average scores with the highest graded mark in preventing infection in the urinary tract.

Alpena received an A last fall, but received C grades in spring 2023, spring 2022, and fall 2021. It received an A in spring 2021 and fall 2020 and a B in spring 2020. The hospital was not graded in fall 2022.

Since Leapfrog reported Hosptial Safety Grades in fall 2022, the group reported in a press release that 92% of the nearly 3,000 grades have improved performance on at least one of three dangerous preventable infections.

Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, focused on safety in a written statement, saying that this is why the group creates the grades.

“While today’s results are promising, patient safety remains a crisis-level hazard in health care,” Binder said. “Some hospitals are much better than others at protecting patients from harm, and that’s why we make the Hospital Safety Grade available to the public and why we encourage all hospitals to focus more attention on safety,”