4 NH Hospitals Get 'A' Rating On New Safety Grades: See Full List

NEW HAMPSHIRE — Four hospitals in the Granite State were given top marks in The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2024 hospital safety grades released Friday.

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit healthcare watchdog group that grades hospitals twice a year, assigns letter grades ranging from “A” to “F,” for 3,000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, and infections.

Overall, hospitals have made great strides since the pandemic years, when the risk of contracting deadly infections was elevated nationwide, the Leapfrog Group said in a news release, but more work needs to be done.

New Hampshire ranked 20th among states for the number of hospitals earning the top letter grade. They are:

• Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
• Exeter Hospital
• Portsmouth Regional Hospital
• Wentworth-Douglass Hospital

Overall, New Hampshire had:

• Three hospitals that earned “B” grades;
• Five hospitals that earned “C” grades;
• One hospital that earned a “D” grade; and
• 12 were not graded.

Debra Cresta, the president of Exeter Hospital, said the organization was “dedicated to fostering a culture where patient well-being is at the heart of everything we do” and the ‘A’ grade affirmed its efforts “to uphold the highest standards of care for our patients and community.”

Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said the grade reflected the “enormous dedication to your patients and their families, and your whole community should be proud. I extend my congratulations to Exeter Hospital, its leadership, clinicians, staff, and volunteers for their tireless efforts to put patients first.”

For the third grading cycle, Utah tops the list with the highest percentage of “A” hospitals, followed, respectively, by Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey, California, Rhode Island, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Carolina. California ranked in the top 10 for the first time since the fall of 2014.

The fall 2024 ratings show improvement in patient safety across several performance measures, including notable improvements on health care-associated infections, hand hygiene and medication safety. Preventable deaths and harm in hospitals has long been a major policy focus for The Leapfrog Group.

While noting the gains hospitals have made in patient safety have saved “countless lives,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release that medical centers nationwide need to accelerate their progress “because no one should have to die from a preventable error in a hospital.”

Binder said significant variation in performance continues across U.S. hospitals. For example, four states — Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont — had no “A” hospitals.

“That’s why it’s so important for people to consult grades when making decisions about seeking care,” Binder said. “All hospitals are not the same.”

Nationally, health care-acquired infections reached their highest peak since 2016 in the fall 2022 safety grades, but they have since declined dramatically, according to the report.

Also, central line-associated bloodstream infections were down 38 percent, catheter-associated urinary tract infections were down 36 and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections decreased by 34 percent.

For more information on the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, visit HospitalSafetyGrade.org.