19 WI Hospitals Get 'A' Rating On New Safety Grades

WISCONSIN — Nineteen hospitals in Wisconsin were given top marks in The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2024 hospital safety grades released Friday.

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit health care 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, but more work needs to be done, the Leapfrog Group said in a news release.

Nineteen of 66 Wisconsin hospitals, or 28.8 percent, were awarded an "A" grade. Wisconsin ranked 25th among states for the number of hospitals earning the top letter grade.

Grade A Hospitals

• Ascension NE Wisconsin - St. Elizabeth Campus 1506 S. Oneida Street, Appleton, WI 54915
• Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital - St. Joseph Campus 5000 W Chambers St, Milwaukee, WI 53210
• Aurora BayCare Medical Center 2845 Greenbrier Road, Green Bay, WI 54311
• Aurora Lakeland Medical Center W3985 County Road NN, Elkhorn, WI 53121
• Aurora Medical Center Burlington 252 McHenry Street, Burlington, WI 53105
• Aurora Medical Center Grafton 975 Port Washington Road, Grafton, WI 53024
• Aurora Medical Center Manitowoc County 5000 Memorial Drive, Two Rivers, WI 54241
• Aurora Medical Center of Kenosha 10400 S. 75th Street, Kenosha, WI 53142
• Aurora Medical Center of Oshkosh 855 N. Westhaven Drive, Oshkosh, WI 54904
• Aurora Medical Center of Washington County 1032 E. Sumner Street, Hartford, WI 53027
• Aurora Medical Center Sheboygan County 3400 Union Ave, Sheboygan, WI 53081
• Aurora Medical Center Summit 36500 Aurora Drive, Summit, WI 53066
• Aurora West Allis Medical Center 8901 W. Lincoln Avenue, West Allis, WI 53227
• Bellin Memorial Hospital 744 S. Webster Avenue, Green Bay, WI 54301
• Beloit Memorial Hospital 1969 W. Hart Road, Beloit, WI 53511
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Eau Claire 1221 Whipple St, Eau Claire, WI 54703
• Mayo Clinic Health System - La Crosse 700 West Avenue S., La Crosse, WI 54601
• Sauk Prairie Hospital 260 26th St., Prairie Du Sac, WI 53578
• Watertown Regional Medical Center 125 Hospital Drive, Watertown, WI 53098

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.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article was updated to provide corrected info.