Jefferson Abington Hospital Earns A Grade For Safety

PHILADELPHIA REGION — The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization, on Thursday released new Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, awarding an A to Jefferson Abington Hospital.

The Abington Township hospital was among a select group of hospitals across the nation awarded an A for their commitment to keeping patients safe and meeting the highest safety standards.

The report shows 57 hospitals in Pennsylvania earned “A” grades based on their ability to protect their patients from often preventable harm. That's up from 54 that received the top rating statewide in the spring.

The report also named “Straight A” hospitals — those earning an A grade for more than two years in a row.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade assigns letter grades of A, B, C, D and F twice annually – in the spring and fall – to hospitals nationwide based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections, and other harms.

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.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is the only rating solely focused on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.

Developed under the guidance of a panel of national experts, it uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals.

“Preventable deaths and harm in hospitals have been a major policy concern for decades,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “Significant variation in performance remains across U.S. hospitals. ... All hospitals are not the same.”