New Safety Grades For Minnesota Hospitals Released

MINNESOTA — Several Minnesota hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries, and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

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.

In Minnesota, 15 hospitals received an A, eight hospitals received a B, 19 hospitals received a C and four hospitals received a D grade. Zero Minnesota hospitals received an F.

Here are the ratings, according to Leapfrog:

A

• Olmsted Medical Center
• Mayo Clinic Hospital - Saint Marys Campus
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Red Wing
• Lake Region Healthcare
• Methodist Hospital
• Abbott Northwestern Hospital
• Mayo Clinic Hospital - Methodist Campus
• Lakeview Hospital
• Owatonna Hospital
• Buffalo Hospital
• M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Mankato
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Austin
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Fairmont
• Hutchinson Health Hospital

B

• Northfield Hospital
• M Health Fairview St. Joseph's Hospital
• Sanford Bemidji Medical Center
• Regions Hospital
• M Health Fairview Northland Medical Center
• M Health Fairview Ridges Hospital
• M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital
• M Health Fairview Woodwinds Hospital

C

• Essentia Health Saint Mary's Medical Center
• Hennepin Healthcare
• Cambridge Medical Center
• Sanford Worthington Medical Center
• Alomere Health
• St. Cloud Hospital
• United Hospital
• Fairview Range
• Winona Health
• M Health Fairview Lakes Medical Center
• Ridgeview Medical Center
• Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital
• Essentia Health - Saint Joseph's Medical Center
• M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center - West Bank Hospital
• Essentia Health - Virginia Clinic
• Essentia Health St. Mary's - Detroit Lakes
• Mercy Hospital
• Mercy Hospital - Unity Campus
• Maple Grove Hospital

D

• North Memorial Health Hospital
• St. Luke's Hospital
• Carris Health - Rice Memorial Hospital
• St. Francis Regional Medical Center

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

Nearly two dozen hospitals have received straight-A reports every year since the Leapfrog Group began its safety grades in 2012. They are:

• Arizona: Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix.
• California: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo.
• Colorado: Rose Medical Center, Denver.
• Florida: AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach.
• Illinois: Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst; Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield; University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago.
• Massachusetts: Beverly Hospital, Beverly; Saint Anne's Hospital, Fall River.
• Michigan: University of Michigan Health, Ann Arbor.
• Mississippi: Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle, Columbus.
• North Carolina: Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh.
• Ohio: OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin;OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware.
• Texas: St. David's Medical Center, Austin.
• Virginia: Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg; Sentara CarePlex Hospital, Hampton; Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg.
• Washington: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle.

Search for your hospital’s fall 2022 safety grade and read more about the methodology.