Hospital In Geneva Earns 'A' Grade In New Safety Ranking

GENEVA, IL — A new hospital safety report released Thursday shows 35 hospitals in Illinois earned “A” grades based on their ability to protect their patients from often preventable harm. Among them was Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva.

The Leapfrog Group’s Fall 2025 Hospital Safety Grades are a biannual ranking that assigns a “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” to all general hospitals in the United States based on their ability to protect patients from medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The Leapfrog Group, a watchdog founded 25 years ago, says it aims to improve American health care through transparency.

The report also named “Straight A” hospitals — those earning an A grade for more than two years in a row. Delnor Hospital is one of them.

Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are largely preventable problems that harm one in four hospital inpatients and cause as many as 250,000 deaths each year, according to The Leapfrog Group. The Safety Grade reports have been a cornerstone of that effort, the group says.

Additionally, 21 hospitals in Illinois earned B grades, 34 received C grades and 14 received D grades. The report also showed 4 Illinois hospitals received a failing F grade.

The Leapfrog Group for the first time in the history of its report cards looked at the performance of hospitals that are part of larger networks of health care facilities that are owned or managed under a single parent organization.

“We want to understand if system leadership accelerates patient safety or not,” Leah Binder, Leapfrog’s president and CEO, said in a news release.

The analysis found that 90 percent of hospitals with a fall 2025 Safety Grade are part of a health system. Among A hospitals, the chance of being system-affiliated is slightly higher, at 94 percent. The same held true for Straight A hospitals, with 95 percent of the 358 Straight A hospitals part of health systems.

Also according to the report, the top five states for the largest percentages of A hospitals are Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut and North Carolina, respectively. Illinois ranked 17th in the percentage of A hospitals on the ranking, with 32.4 percent.

Four states — Iowa, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming — have no A hospitals.