Memorial Hermann Surgical Hospital First Colony in Sugar Land ranked among the worst for institutions disciplined for rates of preventable injuries and infections in patients. The more detailed look at federal data comes after federal regulators penalized the facility. Kaiser Health News reported in December that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reduced funding for 769 hospitals across the U.S. whose rates of preventable illnesses, or “hospital-acquired conditions,” among their patients earned them a score in the bottom 25th percentile out of roughly 3,300 hospitals nationwide for Fiscal Year 2017. A review of CMS data shows that out of those hospitals it scored nationwide, only 195 had scores worse than Memorial Hermann Surgical Hospital First Colony. Memorial Hermann spokesperson Glenn Willey said nobody was available to answer questions for this story. In ranking its hospitals, CMS assigns a score between 1 and 10 to each facility, with 10 indicating the highest rates of HACs and 1 indicating the lowest. Memorial Hermann Surgical Hospital First Colony received a score of 8.0, along with 11 other hospitals. The score is based on hospital’s rates of patients incurring injuries and infections during their stays. These include hip fractures, accidental lacerations, postoperative sepsis, and postoperative wound dehiscence, otherwise known as surgical wounds that fail to stay closed. Memorial Hermann Surgical Hospital First Colony’s performance on CMS’s reviews have gotten worse over the past three years. The facility received a score of 7.0 for FY 2016, according to CMS spokesperson Lindsey O’Keefe. That score also landed the hospital in the bottom 25th percentile of hospitals, triggering CMS’s financial penalties. The hospital did not place in the bottom 25th for FY 2015, O’Keefe said, though she did not specify its score for that year. Under the penalties, Memorial Hermann Surgical Hospital First Colony will see its Medicare payments reduced by 1 percent for the next fiscal year. The financial penalties are required under the Affordable Care Act, and are meant to provide a financial incentive for hospitals to keep their rates of injuries and infections among their patients low.