Monument Health Rapid City Hospital earns highest safety grade in South Dakota

RAPID CITY, S.D. (NOV. 22, 2024) – Monument Health Rapid City Hospital earned a B Grade, the highest of any hospital in South Dakota in the latest Leapfrog Group safety ratings. The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit focused on patient safety, released its Fall 2024 Hospital Safety Grade, recognizing Rapid City Hospital with the highest safety grade of any South Dakota Hospital. The Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 30 performance measures to assign an “A, “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” to individual hospitals.

“Monument Health has been dedicated to improving patient care, preventing infection and injury and our work is being verified through third-party recognition,” said Jill Tice, Vice President of Quality, Safety and Risk Management. “This achievement demonstrates the effectiveness of our ongoing quality initiatives, and we will continue to strive for excellence in all aspects of patient care.”

The Fall safety grades use clinical measurements during performance periods that can date back to 2020 within our last Five-Year Strategic Plan. Monument Health showed improvement in key metrics which was instrumental in contributing to Rapid City Hospital’s improved scores:

• A 66.66% decrease in colon surgical site infections from the two year period 2020-2021 to the two year period of 2022-2023.
• A 92% reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) between June 2022 – July 2023, and since then Rapid City Hospital has achieved 24 consecutive months with no such infection.
• Hospital-onset MRSA bacteremia declined by 75% in the last 12 months.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is the only hospital rating focused exclusively on hospital safety. Updated twice per year, the score regularly garners attention from consumer media and shines a spotlight on the patient safety records of hospitals in local communities.