How well does your hospital keep patients safe?
It’s a big issue that hospitals nationwide spend a lot of time and money on, covering everything from preventing medical errors to safeguarding patients who are compromised for one reason or another.
The Agency for Health Care Administration, which has regulatory oversight over 300 hospitals in Florida, has released survey results from hospital staff who have evaluated how well their employer performs on patient safety.
Florida became the first state making patient safety surveys mandatory. Ambulatory surgery centers likewise have to comply.
The results to a dozen questions do not include a ranking or rating of each hospital. That is unlike commercial and nonprofit organizations, like Healthgrades and the Leapfrog Group, that conduct assessments of hospitals and issue an overall score for easy comparisons.
The state survey findings show that Southwest Florida’s hospitals have high positive results for a “teamwork” approach but the findings for how each hospital “responds to errors” reveal there has not been a big shift from a punitive culture toward creating a learning environment from errors.
Physicians Regional Healthcare System in Collier County did well among all Southwest Florida hospitals for fostering a teamwork approach toward patient care. The Pine Ridge campus had the highest score for teamwork.
The state says the “patient safety culture” of a hospital can be measured by determining which behaviors and practices are “rewarded, supported, expected, and accepted.”
“The information is intended to provide general insight into patient safety culture within health care facilities,” according to the state agency. “It should not be used as the sole basis for making decisions about your health care or medical treatment.”
Federal government points out issues
The state Legislature mandated the patient safety surveys in 2020 but the data collection did not start until 2025. The initial reporting period ran from June 1 to Aug. 31 last year.
The timing coincided with the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health Human Services releasing its own findings that pointed to a widespread issue across the U.S.
The OIG report released in July 2025 said hospitals in the U.S. were not capturing half of patient harm events that were occurring among Medicare patients.
In many cases, hospital staff did not consider some safety events to be harmful or the staff said it was not standard practice to document and address the safety events.
“This was often because hospitals applied narrow definitions of harm,” according to the OIG report. “Of the patient harm events that hospitals captured, few were investigated, and even fewer led to hospitals making improvements for patient safety.”
On the other hand, the federal report said some hospitals took action that included training staff and enhancing monitoring for patient harms.
What does the Florida Hospital Association say?
Florida hospitals have been at the forefront of advancing patient safety and have voluntarily participated in safety and quality survey initiatives before the state survey was mandated, Mary Mayhew, president and chief executive officer of the Florida Hospital Association, said in an email.
“According to (the state agency), the patient safety culture survey was designed for organizations to use as a tool for internal quality improvement and was not intended for the purposes of generating a grade,” she said.
Hospitals will use the staff feedback to help shape and enhance internal procedures and protocols, as well as identify opportunities for additional education, resources, and training, she said.
“As with any survey, results depend on the volume of responses. Without a broad reflection of all employees, information can be distorted and may not accurately depict true employee sentiment.”
How did the state survey work?
Hospital employees tasked with anonymously filling out the state survey gave responses to questions structured around transparency, errors, workload, and organizational learning.
On errors, the questions asked how often “near misses” or actual mistakes are logged and how supervisors or management prioritize safety over productivity or punishment.
Answers ranged from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” to statements and the results were tabulated by a percentage of positive responses to the topic.
How did Southwest Florida hospitals do?
Lee Health has four campuses in Lee. It is the dominant hospital system in Lee County and Southwest Florida with more than 1,800 beds combined and it exceeds 16,000 employees.
The positivity score on teamwork showed Cape Coral Hospital was the highest at 81%, HealthPark at 78%, Gulf Coast Medical Center at 76% and Lee Memorial Hospital at 75%.
The results for how each campus responds to errors shows employees were divided whether a disciplinary culture is what prevails or if there’s been a shift toward mistakes being treated as a learning opportunity.
Cape Coral’s score came in at 62% toward a shift away from a punitive atmosphere, Lee Memorial was at 59%, Gulf Coast at 56% and HealthPark at 54%, according to the findings.
Dr. Minka Schofield, chief quality and patient safety officer for Lee Health, said the system will use the survey results and measures to identify strengths, target opportunities for improvement, and guide action plans across the organization.
“We also maintain a safety event reporting system that allows staff and clinicians to report concerns in real time,” she said.
“The feedback shows high confidence in patient safety, leadership support, and our systems for learning and improvement, often exceeding national benchmarks,” she said.
Naples Comprehensive Health has two hospital campuses with a combined 713 beds and more than 4,000 employees.
On the question of a teamwork approach toward patient care, employees gave NCH Baker Hospital a score of 81% NCH North Naples came in at 77%.
On the issue of shifting away from a punitive environment on mistakes, the score was 66% at NCH Baker and 59% for NCH North.
Dora Krauss, vice president of quality, clinical reputation and compliance at NCH, said the data can provide meaningful insight into safety culture within an organization but the state survey is not designed to be a benchmark tool.
“Hospitals complete the survey during different time periods, serve different patient populations and offer different services, making direct comparisons difficult and potentially misleading without additional context,” she said.
NCH has participated in patient safety culture surveys for more than a decade and uses the information internally to monitor and strengthen our culture of safety, she said.
“We are pleased to see strong teamwork scores at both NCH Baker and NCH North, and we remain committed to using feedback from our caregivers, alongside a wide range of quality and safety measures, to support high-quality care for our patients and community,” she said.
Physicians Regional operates two hospitals with a combined 307 beds off Collier Boulevard and off Pine Ridge Road.
Physicians Regional had the highest scores of all hospitals in the two counties on fostering a teamwork approach with Pine Ridge campus scoring 88% on that measure and the Collier campus at 80%.
On how each campus responds to errors and moving away from a punitive atmosphere to a learning environment the Collier campus had a positive score at 60% and the Pine Ridge came in at 59%.
Physicians Regional spokeswoman Brittney Thoman said the results posted online are from our first patient safety culture survey since the program became effective.
“The teamwork domain indicates our staff perceive a strong culture of collaboration, mutual support and effective teamwork across the organization,” she said.
“While the results show staff generally feel comfortable reporting patient safety events, we can build on our strong teamwork foundation by further enhancing psychological safety and increasing staff confidence in reporting, discussing, and learning from patient safety events,” she said.
Thoman said the survey results are useful to identify areas of success and where there is opportunity to improve, more than any cause for concern.
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Liz Freeman is a health care reporter. Reach her by emailing lfreeman@naplesnews.com
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This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: How safe are patients in Southwest Florida hospitals?
Reporting by Liz Freeman, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Liz Freeman, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
