Home » St. Elizabeth keeps its A safety-grade ranking from Leapfrog for fifth straight year

St. Elizabeth keeps its A safety-grade ranking from Leapfrog for fifth straight year

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Leapfrog Group, based in Washington, D.C., rates more than 2,600 hospitals. Most of Kentucky’s 126 hospitals were not rated, but those that are have a majority of the hospital beds in the state.

The group does not grade small hospitals with “critical access” status because they don’t have to report quality measures to the federal government, nor does it grade specialty hospitals, government hospitals, or hospitals for which there aren’t enough publicly reported data.

Leapfrog gave As to 16 Kentucky hospitals, or about 36 percent of those it graded, up from about 26% getting As on the last report. Based on the number of hospitals with As, Leapfrog ranked Kentucky 21st among the states, up from 33rd in the last report. It gave Bs to eight hospitals, Cs to 19, and Ds to two.

The twice-yearly grades are based on 27 performance measures of patient safety that indicate how well hospitals protect patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. 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.

The Leapfrog site offers details on each measure, under headings titled Infections, Problems with surgery, Practices to prevent errors, Safety problems, Doctors, Nurses, and Hospital staff. It also includes an easy-to-read, color-coded scale that indicates how the hospital is performing.