46 Illinois Hospitals Get A Safety Grades

ILLINOIS — Forty-six Illinois hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new fall 2019 ratings released Thursday by the Leapfrog Group. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 33 percent earned an A grade, a 1 percent increase from the last round of safety grades, released in Spring 2019.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Maine, Utah, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Three states — Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota — did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

Here are the Illinois hospitals that received an A rating from the Leapfrog Group:

• AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center Bolingbrook
• AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center GlenOaks, Glendale Heights
• AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center Hinsdale
• AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center La Grange
• AMITA Health Resurrection Medical Center Chicago
• AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago
• AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center Joliet
• AMITA Health Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center Chicago
• AMITA Health St. Alexius Medical Center Hoffman Estates
• AMITA Health St. Mary's Hospital Kankakee
• CGH Medical Center, Sterling
• Edward Hospital, Naperville
• Elmhurst Memorial Hospital
• HSHS St. Elizabeth's Hospital, O'Fallon
• HSHS St. John's Hospital, Springfield
• HSHS St. Mary's Hospital, Decatur
• Illinois Valley Community Hospital, Peru
• Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care Centers, Evergreen Park
• Loretto Hospital, Chicago
• Loyola Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, Melrose Park
• Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood
• Morris Hospital
• NorthShore University HealthSystem -Evanston Hospital
• NorthShore University HealthSystem -Glenbrook Hospital
• NorthShore University HealthSystem -Skokie Hospital
• NorthShore University HealthSystem-Highland Park Hospital
• Northwest Community Hospital, Arlington Heights
• Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield
• Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital, Geneva
• Northwestern Medicine Huntley Hospital
• Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital, DeKalb
• Northwestern Medicine McHenry Hospital
• Northwestern Medicine, Lake Forest Hospital
• OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center, Peoria
• OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center, Urbana
• OSF Saint Anthony's Health Center, Alton
• OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, Bloomington
• OSF St. Mary Medical Center, Galesburg
• Ottawa Regional Hospital and Healthcare Center dba OSF Saint Elizabeth Medical Center
• Riverside Medical Center, Kankakee
• Rush Copley Medical Center, Aurora
• Rush Oak Park Hospital
• Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, Mattoon
• Silver Cross Hospital, New Lenox
• University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago
• West Suburban Medical Center, Oak Park

A total of 19 Illinois hospitals received "B" safety grades, 39 hospitals received a "C" grade and four received a "D" grade.

The release of the Fall 2019 safety grades coincides with the 20th anniversary of a published report that revealed nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year because of preventable medical errors.

“In stark contrast to 20 years ago, we’re now able to pinpoint where the problems are, and that allows us to grade hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process.”

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes performance measures taken from federal government data and the group’s own hospital survey to “produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.” The group relies on a panel of experts to select the measures used in the methodology and to develop a scoring system. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)