CA's Safest Hospitals: New Ratings Released For Fall

CALIFORNIA — Several California hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

In the Golden State, these hospitals have received an A grade every year since 2012: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; and Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

In California, some 76 hospitals received an A, 79 hospitals received a B, 106 hospitals received a C and 17 hospitals received a D grade. Just four hospitals received an F.

Here are some of the ratings from each grade level, according to Leapfrog (the full list can be found here):

A GRADE

• Adventist Health St. Helena
• Arroyo Grande Community Hospital
• Mercy General Hospital
• Kaiser Foundation Hospital - Roseville
• Paradise Valley Hospital
• UC San Diego Health Hillcrest - Hillcrest Medical Center
• Sharp Grossmont Hospital
• Enloe Medical Center
• St. Elizabeth Community Hospital
• Kaiser Foundation Hospital - Fremont

B GRADE

• Queen of the Valley Medical Center - Napa
• Oak Valley District Hospital
• Bakersfield Memorial Hospital
• California Pacific Medical Center - Mission Bernal Campus
• Kaiser Foundation Hospital - Walnut Creek
• St. Joseph's Medical Center of Stockton
• Novato Community Hospital
• Petaluma Valley Hospital
• Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center
• Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center

C GRADE

• Doctors Hospital of Manteca
• Tri-City Medical Center
• Adventist Health and Rideout
• Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital
• Saint Francis Memorial Hospital
• O'Connor Hospital
• Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
• Emanuel Medical Center
• Alameda Hospital
• Coast Plaza Hospital

D GRADE

• Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center
• Dominican Hospital
• Riverside University Health System - Medical Center
• Mercy Hospital - Southwest
• PIH Health Good Samaritan Hospital
• West Hills Hospital and Medical Center
• Long Beach Memorial Medical Center
• Victor Valley Global Medical Center
• Sutter Delta Medical Center
• Desert Regional Medical Center

F GRADE

• Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital
• Pacifica Hospital of the Valley
• San Joaquin General Hospital
• San Mateo Medical Center

With the release of its fall report, The Leapfrog Group has analyzed hospital safety data for a decade. Most hospitals have improved over time under more public scrutiny, Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“For a long time, the health care community tried to improve safety, but progress stalled,” Binder said. “The big difference over this decade is that for the first time, we publicly reported each hospital’s record on patient safety, and that galvanized the kind of change we all hoped for.

“It’s not enough change, but we are on the right track,” she said.

Notably, hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

Also, according to the report, progress on the number of patients treated for health care-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly two dozen hospitals have received straight-A reports every year since the Leapfrog Group began its safety grades in 2012. They are:

• Arizona: Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix.
• California: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo.
• Colorado: Rose Medical Center, Denver.
• Florida: AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach.
• Illinois: Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst; Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield; University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago.
• Massachusetts: Beverly Hospital, Beverly; Saint Anne's Hospital, Fall River.
• Michigan: University of Michigan Health, Ann Arbor.
• Mississippi: Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle, Columbus.
• North Carolina: Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh.
• Ohio: OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin;OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware.
• Texas: St. David's Medical Center, Austin.
• Virginia: Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg; Sentara CarePlex Hospital, Hampton; Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg.
• Washington: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle.

Search for your hospital’s fall 2022 safety grade and read more about the methodology.