2 HV Hospitals Earn ‘A’ Grade, 3 Get 'D' In Latest Leapfrog Ratings

HUDSON VALLEY — Hospitals nationwide made significant improvements in preventing a "disturbing" increase in hospital infections during the coronavirus pandemic, The Leapfrog Group said with the release Monday of its Fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grades Report.

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 how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections. Overall, the report shows hospitals significantly reduced infections after the pandemic spike, but patient-reported experiences declined for the second year in a row.

Among the 17 Hudson Valley hospitals evaluated in the report, just two received the gold-standard "A" safety grade. Another two earned a "B," 10 earned a "C" and three earned a "D." None received an "F."

Hudson Valley hospitals earning "A" grades are:

• Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, which earned "A" in the spring as well, pulling its grades up after 2022 in which it earned a "D" in the spring and a "C" in the fall.
• White Plains Hospital continued its streak, also having earned an "A" in the spring and an "A" in the fall of 2022.

Other Hudson Valley hospitals ranked:

Patch reached out to Westchester Medical Center and will update this story when we get a reply.

The Leapfrog Group grades hospitals twice a year. In the fall report, the first report using post-pandemic data, 30 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an "A" while 24 percent earned a "B," 39 percent earned a "C," 7 percent earned a "D," and fewer than 1 percent earned an "F."

The 10 states with the highest number of "A" hospitals are Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Connecticut, Montana, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.

States that had no "A" hospitals are Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware and North Dakota, as well as Washington, D.C.

More than 85 percent of hospitals saw decreases in the three most dangerous infections — MRSA, central-line bloodstream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

• 19 percent improved in all three infection measures;
• 66 percent improved in at least one infection measure;
• 16 percent continued to worsen or did not improve.

"Now that we have pre- and post-pandemic data for patient safety measures, we are encouraged by the improvement in infections and applaud hospitals for reversing the disturbing infection spike we saw during the pandemic," Leapfrog president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

However, Binder said the continued decline in patient experiences is "deeply concerning." Hospitals in all states have seen a significant decline in reported patient experiences since the fall of 2021, the report said.

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.

Editor's Note: The number of hospitals receiving a "D" grade was incorrect in the original version of the headline. Patch regrets the error.