The Leapfrog Group on Thursday released its Spring Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, giving about one-third of hospitals an "A" grade—but giving more than 40% of hospitals a "C" or worse.

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Methodology

For the report, Leapfrog assigned "A" to "F" letter grades to more than 2,700 general acute-care hospitals in the United States based on up to 27 national patient safety measures from CMS and the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, as well as data from supplemental sources. The measures include 12 process and structural metrics, such as hand hygiene and ICU physician staffing, as well as 15 outcome metrics, including rates of falls and trauma and pressure ulcers.

The hospital benchmark generator

The Leapfrog ratings, which are updated twice a year, focus on acute-care hospitals. The ratings do not cover facilities such as critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, and federal hospitals because of a lack of sufficient data.

How hospitals performed

In the latest report, of the more than 2,700 general acute-care hospitals graded:

• 33% received an "A" rating;
• 24% received a "B" rating;
• 35% received a "C" rating;
• 7% received a "D" rating; and
• Less than 1% received an "F" rating.

To see how your hospital fared, visit Leapfrog Group's website.

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Comments

Leapfrog noted that of the hospitals that received an "A" rating this year, 27 had received 19 consecutive "A" ratings, meaning the hospitals received an "A" rating in every biannual grading cycle since Leapfrog launched the safety grades in 2012.

"We find that straight 'A' hospitals have strong structures of safety in place," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said. "These hospitals are continuously learning, monitoring data, and addressing areas of improvement."

Binder noted that, while the performance measures collected for this edition of Leapfrog's grades were collected before the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, the grades can be viewed as a proxy for how well hospitals safely cared for Covid-19 patients.

"This [epidemic] emphasized how much we rely on America's health care workforce," Binder said. "Our straight 'A' hospitals remind us how preparedness protected their patients as well as their workforce and created a high level of organizational resilience. As we emerge from the [epidemic], hospitals need to double down on safety, so they save lives, strengthen organizations, and position themselves to withstand the next crisis. Putting safety first should be the priority of every hospital CEO" (Leapfrog release, 4/29; Leapfrog methodology, accessed 4/30).