Hospitals given semi-annual grades based on patient-safety metrics; post-op sepsis, other issues included for first time

Screenshot of Leapfrog page for Hazard Appalachian
Regional Healthcare Medical Center in Hazard, Ky.

A nonprofit group has released its semi-annual report grading hospitals for patient safety. The Leapfrog Group, based in Washington, D.C., rated 2,901 general acute-care hospitals, the most ever. The twice-yearly grades are based on more than 30 performance measures of patient safety that indicate how well hospitals protect patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections. The safety guide is the only hospital ratings system based exclusively on a hospital's ability to prevent medical errors and harm to patients.

The group doesn't grade critical-access hospitals, since they don't have to report quality measures to the federal government. It also doesn't grade specialty hospitals, government hospitals, or hospitals that don't have enough publicly reported data.

For the first time, the report includes performance grades for post-operative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury. A news release notes that post-operative sepsis can result in "suffering, disability and sometimes death" for an estimated 160,000 Americans a year. It adds that sepsis in all settings kills over 270,000 people a year and is the costliest condition in U.S. hospitals. Further, it says that Black people are twice as likely as white people to be diagnosed with sepsis.

The report uses data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Leapfrog's own survey, and other supplemental data sources. Hospitals are only graded if they have submitted adequate data for evaluation, Leapfrog says. The site offers details on each measure under headings titled Infections, Problems with Surgery, Practices to Prevent Errors, Safety Problems, and Doctors, Nurses and Hospital Staff. It also includes an easy-to-read, color-coded scale that indicates how the hospital is performing.

Click here to see how your local hospital—and its neighbors—have scored.