Beverly Hospital Earns 'A' In National Safety Grades: Leapfrog

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly Hospital earned top grades for safety for the 10th consecutive year according to a new ranking from The Leapfrog Group.

Leapfrog, which grades hospitals on safety each year, designated Beverly Hospital as one of only 22 hospitals nationwide to receive an "A" grade for the full decade since Leapfrog began conducting the safety surveys.

"We are so proud to accept this 'A' recognition, which highlights the unwavering commitment of our Beverly Hospital team to providing the highest quality care and the safest experience possible to our patients," Beverly Hospital President Tom Sands said. "We applaud the efforts of our nurses, clinicians and staff each and every day, and are grateful to the Leapfrog Group for recognizing their efforts."

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.

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 to 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 in the number of patients treated for health care-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.

"A hospital receiving consistent 'A' grades for an entire decade is a rare and remarkable achievement," Binder said. "This persistence demonstrates a hospital's dedication to continuously prioritize patient safety while adapting to an evolving health care landscape and facing the challenges of a global pandemic.

"his hospital and community should be momentously proud."

Go here for Beverly Hospital's grades in the fall 2022 safety report and read more about the methodology.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)