New Hospital Safety Scores Help Patients Find the Safest U.S. Hospitals

New data released today from The Leapfrog Group provides updated patient safety ratings for more than 2,500 general hospitals, helping consumers to make smarter choices in their personal health care. The Fall 2014 update to Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Score, which assigns A, B, C, D and F grades to hospitals based on their ability to prevent errors, injuries and infections, shows that while hospitals have made significant improvements when it comes to implementing processes of care and safe practices, performance on outcomes lags behind. Since April 2014, there’s been improvement on all 15 of Leapfrog’s “process” measures—such as hand hygiene and physician staffing in intensive care units. However, the data also points to a lack of progress on outcomes, with hospitals even declining on certain measures, such as preventing surgical site infections in patients who have undergone major colon surgery.

Access the latest Hospital Safety Scores online.