The Leapfrog Group recently announced the spring 2019 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, a biannual grading survey that assigns A, B, C, D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the U.S., focusing entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections that collectively are the third leading cause of death in the United States.
Several local hospitals received an A rating, including Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian.
The report from the Leapfrog Group is the only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety. The scores are free to the public and is designed to give consumers information when facing a hospital stay.
“Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grades recognize hospitals like UCI Medical Center that focus on advancing patient safety. This ranking provides an important resource for patients, and a benchmark for hospitals, to determine how care at one hospital compares to others in a region,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “Hospitals that earn an ‘A’ Hospital Safety Grade deserve to be recognized for their efforts in preventing medical harm and errors.”
Of more than 2,600 hospitals included in the study:
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32% earned an A
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26% earned a B
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36% a C
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6% a D
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1% an F
Factors such as how often a hospital gives patients recommended treatment for a given medical condition or procedure; the environment in which patients receive care, such as whether a hospital uses a computerized physician order entry system to prevent medication errors; and what happens to a patient while receiving care, such as whether care teams left foreign objects in patients while undergoing surgery, are considered when giving the safety scores.
“Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades have definitely spurred these improvement efforts. But the hospitals achieving new milestones are doing the hard work, and we salute them as well as the leaders, researchers and organizations fighting every year for patient safety,” said Binder.
View hospital grades in your area here.
