The Leapfrog Group on Thursday released its Fall Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, giving 855 an "A," but giving more than 1,000 a "C" or below.

Just updated: Your 1-page guide to understanding Leapfrog's rating metrics and methodologies

The updated ratings for each hospital are available on Leapfrog's HospitalSafetyGrade.org website.

Methodology

For the latest rankings, Leapfrog assigned "A" to "F" letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States based on 13 process and structural measures and 15 outcome measures that represent medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.

Leapfrog for the latest ratings expanded its methodology to include an assessment of a hospital's use of bar code medication administration, which can reduce the risk of a patient receiving the wrong medication.

Two ways to identify clinical variation

The Leapfrog ratings, which are updated twice a year, focus on acute-care hospitals and exclude facilities such as critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, and federal hospitals because of an absence of data.

How hospitals performed

In the latest report:

• 855 hospitals earned an "A" rating;
• 638 hospitals earned a "B" rating;
• 976 hospitals earned a "C" rating;
• 164 hospitals earned a "D" rating; and
• 17 hospitals earned an "F" rating.

According to the Leapfrog Group, 42 hospitals nationwide have received an "A" rating in every update since the rankings began in spring 2012.

Discussion

Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, noted that despite public concern about health care, politicians have largely ignored patient safety. She said, "Health care was an important issue in the 2018 midterm elections, yet both parties are still neglecting the third leading cause of death in America—errors and infections in hospitals."

Binder added that all elected officials, from the city to the federal level, "should hold hospitals accountable and support efforts to improve patient safety" (Leapfrog Group scoring methodology changes, accessed 11/7; Leapfrog Group scoring methodology, accessed 11/7; Leapfrog Group, Explanation of Hospital Safety Grades, accessed 11/7; Leapgfrog Group release, 11/8; Castellucci, Modern Healthcare, 11/8).

Cheat sheets: Learn how Leapfrog—and 4 other ratings programs—actually work

Download our one page sheets for summaries on the methodology and metric categories used in seven hospital quality rating programs:

• Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Grade
• CMS Overall Star Ratings
• Healthgrades Patient Safety Ratings and Excellence Awards
• Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals
• US News and World Report Best Hospital Rankings

Get all the Cheat Sheets