New PA Hospital Safety Ratings For 2024: See Best, Worst

PENNSYLVANIA — Several hospitals in Pennsylvania were given top safety grades in The Leapfrog Group’s spring 2024 Hospital Safety Grades released Wednesday.

The independent, nonprofit watchdog group assigned safety grades, ranging from “A” to “F,” for 3,000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections.

The Leapfrog Group, which grades hospitals twice a year, also ranked the 10 states with the highest number of “A” hospitals. Utah tops the list, followed by Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Alaska, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine, respectively.

In Pennsylvania, 56 hospitals receiving the top letter grade were:

• Geisinger Community Medical Center, Scranton
  • Fall 2023: C
• St. Luke's Hospital - Allentown Campus, Allentown
  • Fall 2023: A
• Geisinger Medical Center, Danville
  • Fall 2023: A
• Temple University Hospital - Main Campus, Philadelphia
  • Fall 2023: B
• WellSpan York Hospital, York
  • Fall 2023: B
• Geisinger Lewistown Hospital, Lewistown
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Luke's University Hospital - Bethlehem Campus, Bethlehem
  • Fall 2023: A

• WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital, Gettysburg
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Harrisburg, Harrisburg
• Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Community, Harrisburg
  • Fall 2023: A
• Lower Bucks Hospital, Bristol
  • Fall 2023: B
• Temple University Hospital Jeanes Campus, Philadelphia
  • Fall 2023: B
• Holy Redeemer Hospital and Medical Center, Meadowbrook
  • Fall 2023: A
• Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Memorial, York
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC ST MARGARET, Pittsburgh
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC PASSAVANT, Pittsburgh
  • Fall 2023: A
• Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, East Norriton
  • Fall 2023: A
• Suburban Community Hospital, East Norriton
  • Fall 2023: A
• Wellspan Waynesboro Hospital, Waynesboro
  • Fall 2023: A
• Main Line Health-Bryn Mawr Hospital, Bryn Mawr
  • Fall 2023: A
• Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia
  • Fall 2023: B
• Main Line Health-Paoli Hospital, Paoli
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Luke's Easton Campus, Easton
  • Fall 2023: A
• Chester County Hospital, West Chester
  • Fall 2023: B
• Main Line Health-Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Luke's Sacred Heart Campus, Allentown
  • Fall 2023: A
• Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono, East Stroudsburg
  • Fall 2023: B
• Doylestown Hospital, Doylestown
  • Fall 2023: A
• Main Line Health-Riddle Hospital, Media
  • Fall 2023: A
• WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital, Ephrata
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Clair Health, Pittsburgh
  • Fall 2023: B
• UPMC Hanover, Hanover
  • Fall 2023: A
• AHN Grove City, Grove City
  • Fall 2023: B
• Roxborough Memorial Hospital, Philadelphia
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Luke's Hospital - Anderson Campus, Easton
  • Fall 2023: A
• St. Luke's Monroe Campus, Stroudsburg
  • Fall 2023: A
• Geisinger St. Luke's Hospital, Orwigsburg
  • Fall 2023: A
• AHN Wexford Hospital, Wexford
  • Fall 2023: NG
• St. Luke's Carbon Campus, Lehighton
  • Fall 2023: NG
• Lehigh Valley Hospital-Hecktown Oaks, Easton
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Passavant - Cranberry, Cranberry Township
  • Fall 2023: A
• Heritage Valley Sewickley, Sewickley
  • Fall 2023: A
• Allegheny Valley Hospital, Natrona Heights
  • Fall 2023: B
• UPMC Carlisle, Carlisle
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC West Shore, Mechanicsburg
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Somerset, Somerset
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Jameson, New Castle
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Presbyterian, Pittsburgh
  • Fall 2023: A
• Heritage Valley Beaver, Beaver
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Northwest, Seneca
  • Fall 2023: B
• Conemaugh Nason Medical Center, Roaring Spring
  • Fall 2023: A
• Geisinger Shamokin Area Community Hospital, Coal Township
  • Fall 2023: A
• Wellspan Good Samaritan Hospital, Lebanon
  • Fall 2023: A
• UPMC Bedford, Everett
  • Fall 2023: A

Overall, Pennsylvania had:

• 37 hospitals that earned “B” grades;
• 29 hospitals that earned “C” grades; and
• Six hospitals that earned a “D” grade.

The hospitals that earned a "D" grade were Crozer-Chester Medical Center (Upland); Taylor Hospital (Ridley Park); Heritage Valley Kennedy (Mckees Rocks); Warren General Hospital (Warren); Penn Highlands Mon Valley (Monongahela); Wilkes-Barre General Hospital (Wilkes-Barre); and ACMH Hospital (Kittanning).

For the first time this spring, the watchdog ranked the top 25 metropolitan statistical reporting areas according to the number of “A” hospitals. The top three metro areas are Allentown, Pennsylvania; Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metro area in PA/NJ ranked No. 1 among the top 25.

Nationwide, hospitals showed improvements over their fall 2023 performance in both reducing hospital-acquired infections and improving patient experiences, the report said.

Hospital-acquired infections and preventable errors kill about 250,000 people a year in the United States, making patient safety problems the nation’s third-leading cause of death, according to a summary of peer-reviewed research published in the global health care journal BMJ.

Hospital-acquired infections soared to levels not seen since 2016 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that spike, 92 percent of hospitals showed improved performance on at least one of three dangerous infections, the report said.

Central line-associated bloodstream infections were down by 34 percent, and both catheter-associated urinary tract infections and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections decreased by 30 percent.

Despite the improvements, “patient safety remains a crisis-level hazard in health care,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“Some hospitals are much better than others at protecting patients from harm, and that’s why we make the Hospital Safety Grade available to the public and why we encourage all hospitals to focus more attention on safety,” Binder said.

Patient experiences have worsened since the pandemic, and while the spring report shows improvement, patients don’t report the same level of confidence they had before the pandemic, according to the report.

Patient experience is measured through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to publicly report how hospital patients measure the care they received.

The five measures are nurse communication, doctor communication, hospital staff responsiveness, communication about medicines and discharge information.

“Patient experience is very difficult to influence without delivering better care, so these findings are encouraging,” Binder said. “We were also pleased to see the decrease in preventable infections, which cause terrible suffering and sometimes death. When we look at these positive trends, we see lives saved — and that is gratifying.”