Hospitals in some states continue to show dramatic improvements in the Fall 2017 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, with Rhode Island achieving first place after being 50th in 2012. Other states ranked near the bottom five years ago are now at the top.
The Leapfrog Group’s biannual state rankings assign letter grades to general acute care hospitals in the United States, and states are ranked according to their percentage of “A” hospitals. There have been significant improvements in five states since the inception of the Safety
Grades in 2012. (More information on the Leapfrog rankings is available online at: http://bit.ly/2mBmMSK.)
Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin, and Idaho showed the most improvement over the five-year period since the inception of the Hospital Safety Grade. The most dramatic improvement came from Rhode Island, which was ranked 50th in 2012 and currently ranks first. Other states with significant improvement include Oregon, going from 48th in 2012 to eighth, Hawaii from 36th to third, Wisconsin from 44th to sixth, and Idaho from 19th to fourth.
The improvements indicate that transparency has a positive effect on patient safety, Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder said in a statement accompanying the results.
Maryland, previously not graded due to an exemption from reporting key safety metrics at the national level, recently appeared in the rankings for the first time. Maryland now ranks fourth from the bottom. Of the 44 hospitals graded in Maryland, just one, Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, earned an “A.”
Leapfrog reported the following additional findings:
- Of the 2,632 hospitals graded, 832 earned an “A,” 662 a “B,” 964 a “C,” 159 a “D,” and 15 an “F.”
- Hospitals with “F” grades are located in California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, and Washington, DC.
- Fifty-nine hospitals nationwide have achieved an “A” in every scoring update since the launch of the Safety Grade in spring 2012.
- The five states with the highest percentage of “A” hospitals this fall are Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, and Virginia.
- North Dakota, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Washington, DC, have the lowest percentage of “A” hospitals.
