The hospitals getting failing grades and straight As from Leapfrog

A “C” grade was the most common for hospitals analyzed in the fall edition of the Leapfrog Group’s hospital safety grades report, the first to include results for Maryland hospitals.

Maryland had previously been exempted from reporting key hospital safety metrics. Its hospitals didn’t fare well in their first report, with just one out of 44—Howard County General Hospital in Columbia—earning an “A” grade, the fourth lowest percentage in the country behind North Dakota, Washington D.C., and Delaware and just ahead of New York.

“Maryland hospitals rank 37th on Outcomes and 50th on Process/Structures, indicating there is significant improvement needed in all areas of patient safety analyzed in the safety grade,” Leapfrog told HealthExec.

Other states have shown its possible to turn grades around in just a few years. Oregon has climbed 48th in the first safety grade report in 2012 to eighth. Hawaii went from 36th to third, Wisconsin from 44th to sixth and Idaho from 19th to fourth. The most dramatic turnaround has been in Rhode Island, which ranked 50^th in 2012 but earned the top spot in the fall 2017 grades with five of its seven hospitals earning “A” grades.

The highest number of “A” graded hospitals were found in Texas (77 out of 210 hospitals), followed by California (74 out of 265) and Florida (53 out of 174).

“What we’ve learned is that transparency has a real impact on patient safety,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a statement. By making the Hospital Safety Grades public, we’ve galvanized major changes in these states and many communities.”

There were more hospitals with failing grades in this report, however, than in the Spring 2017 edition. Those 15 hospitals were:

1. Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, Calif.
2. Hemet Valley Medical Center in Hemet, Calif.
3. Memorial Hospital of Gardena in Gardena, Calif.
4. Menifee Valley Medical Center in Sun City, Calif.
5. Olympia Medical Center in Los Angeles, Calif.
6. Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, Calif.
7. Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C.
8. United Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
9. Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center in Davenport, Fla.
10. Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Ill.
11. Bon Secours Baltimore Health System
12. University of Mississippi Medical Center Grenada in Grenada, Miss.
13. Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
14. Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
15. Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, N.Y.

Quick turnaround are possible on an individual hospital basis too. Mercy Regional Hospital Medical Center of Lorain, Ohio was one of 10 hospitals given an “F” in the spring 2017 report, but earned an “A” grade this time around.

Since the launch of the safety grade report in spring 2012, 59 hospitals have earned an “A” in every scoring update. Illinois has the most straight “A” hospitals out of any state with 10 facilities. The full list can be found here.