Health & Fitness

New IL Hospital Safety Grades: 33 A's, 5 D's, 1 F

Health care watchdog Leapfrog graded nearly 3,000 hospitals on how well they eliminated errors and prevented infections amid the pandemic.

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ILLINOIS — More than 30 Illinois hospitals got top marks for safety, while a handful of others didn't measure up, according to new rankings released Wednesday by the Leapfrog Group.

The nonprofit health care watchdog grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from A to F based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

The fall 2021 Hospital Safety Grade represents the largest set of hospitals ever graded, with grades assigned to 2,901 facilities.

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In Illinois, 33 hospitals received an A, while 32 got B's and 45 got C's. Four hospitals took home a D at the top of their report card, while one — St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago — flunked the test.

Patched has reached out to St. Bernard Hospital for comment. Any information received will be added here.

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Memorial Hospital East in Shiloh was not graded.

Here are the full rankings, according to Leapfrog:

A

B

C

D

F

Not Graded

The rankings come as the coronavirus pandemic places increasing strain on the state's health care system.

"As the pandemic continues, we all have heightened awareness of the importance of hospitals in our communities and in our lives," said Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder. "It is critical that all hospitals put patient safety first. Now we have more information on more hospitals than ever before, so people can protect themselves and their families."

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 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is available online.

Findings from the fall 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

  • Thirty-two percent of hospitals received an A grade; 26 percent received a B 35 percent received a C 7 percent received a D and less than 1 percent received an F.
  • The five states with the highest percentages of A hospitals are Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho, Massachusetts and Colorado.
  • There were no A hospitals in Delaware, Washington, D.C. and North Dakota.

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