Grades reflecting the quality of patient care and satisfaction are climbing at King’s Daughters Medical Center as it received a B grade from Hospital Safety Score — up from a C just this past spring.

“We’ve been able to achieve the things that we want on the safety side and do the things we need to do to ensure that whenever you come to the hospital that it’s a safe place,” said Director of Marketing David Culpepper. “That when you leave you’re on the road to wellness.”

Culpepper said the effort toward improvement at KDMC starts at the top with CEO Alvin Hoover and COO Tom Hood, is focused on at the administrative level, and trickles down through doctors, nurses and staff.

“It’s about continuing to improve and continue to recognize that ‘OK, yeah, we’ve done a great job, everybody take a deep breath, let’s give ourselves a hand — now let’s get back to work,’” Culpepper said.

The Hospital Safety Score was released Oct. 28 by The Leapfrog Group and assigns letter grades to hospitals, rating them on errors, injuries, accidents and infections. Hospitals are graded twice a year and The Hospital Safety Score uses nationally available publicly reported data, including Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey.

“We look to see how is KDMC doing? How can we get better?” said Brianna Standberry, quality data analyst at KDMC. “And then our ongoing commitment to quality and improvement will in turn reflect on the scores.”

In Mississippi, only five of 33 graded hospitals received an A, six received a B, 17 received a C, four received a D and one received an F for the fall 2015 term. When KDMC was graded in spring 2015 it received a C grade, and Culpepper said the hospital staff has been working hard on many levels to get to the improved score.

Standberry said the process of improvement is one that is worked on every day, and that to get from a B to an A, KDMC will “continue to improve and even look for more ways to do even better. I think it’s just an ongoing process of doing better and striving to give that great patient care.”

KDMC takes any ratings system, such as healthgrades.com, Women’s Choice Award or carechex.com, into consideration and it has reflected in many accolades in recent years.

“If you look at the consistency of the awards year in and year out, the quality is there,” Culpepper said. “You don’t achieve those awards year in and year out if you’re not doing the right things continually everyday to get better.”