The Safest Hospitals In Denver Metro Area: New Rankings Released

DENVER, CO — Several hospitals in the Denver area received top marks, but others didn’t quite measure up in the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group.

The latest ratings reflect care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Leapfrog Group said its and other groups’ research showed the pandemic reversed years of progress in patient safety.

The pandemic has had a negative effect on “health care delivery at every level and setting, from staffing shortages to increased infections to the very care patients receive,” according to the Patient Experience During the Pandemic: Adult Inpatient Care report, also released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group.

“The health care workforce has faced unprecedented levels of pressure during the pandemic, and as a result, patients' experience with their care appears to have suffered,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “We commend the workforce for their heroic efforts these past few years and now strongly urge hospital leadership to recommit to improved care — from communication to responsiveness — and get back on track with patient safety outcomes.”

In Colorado, 26 hospitals received an "A" grade, 7 hospitals received a "B" grade, 11 hospitals received a "C" grade and 3 hospitals received a "D" grade.

Here are the rankings for the Denver Metro Area, according to Leapfrog:

A

• Denver Health Medical Center, Denver
• Rose Medical Center, Denver
• Saint Joseph Hospital, Denver
• Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Denver
• Centura Health-Porter Adventist Hospital, Denver
• Swedish Medical Center, Englewood
• Lutheran Medical Center, Wheat Ridge

B

• Centura Health-St. Anthony Hospital, Lakewood

C

• Medical Center of Aurora, Aurora

D

• UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora

The letter grades assigned to nearly 3,000 U.S general hospitals were based 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, accidents, injuries and infections.

Included in the 30 are five that research has shown to directly affect patient outcomes, but can be improved with greater communication between caregivers and patients — the number of central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, infections from colon surgery, MRSA (Staphylococcus) blood laboratory-identified events, and facility-wide inpatient diarrhea events.

When there’s communication about medications, for example, that can lead to fewer hospitalizations for conditions such as sepsis and blood clots, fewer complications, and decreases in the incidence of respiratory failure, Leapfrog said.

Among the findings:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an “A,” 24 percent received a “B,” 36 percent received a “C,” 7 percent received a “D.” and fewer than 1 percent received an “F”.
• The states with the highest percentages of “A” hospitals are North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Colorado and Michigan.
• There were no “A” hospitals in Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota or the District of Columbia.

To determine each hospital’s grade, a panel of medical experts selected 30 evidence-based measures of patient safety such as postoperative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury. They then determined the weight of each measure based on evidence, opportunity for improvement and patient impact.

Data on each measure was collected through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Information from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, available to all hospitals to complete, also affects grades.

Currently, Leapfrog does not assign grades to military or Veterans Administration hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children’s hospitals or outpatient surgery centers.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.

The full methodology for the 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is available online.

UC Health issued the following statement in response to its letter grade, which reads, in part:

"UCHealth does not participate in Leapfrog surveys, so the letter grades they assign to our hospitals are arbitrary at best. Leapfrog invites hospitals to submit data which is often unverified, and their data collection process is cumbersome and requires a significant amount of time.

We do not see that their lengthy survey helps us drive quality improvements for our patients, so we choose not to dedicate resources to participate. We do participate in several quality programs including Vizient, IBM Watson, CMS and U.S. News and World Report.

For hospitals like UCHealth who choose not to participate, Leapfrog may pull data from other sources, often resulting in incorrect or older data being compared against the unverified data self-reported from other hospitals. In addition, hospitals that choose not participate in the survey don’t have the opportunity to achieve all the points – and therefore are automatically scored lower than others."