Metro Milwaukee's Safest Hospitals: New Ratings Released

WISCONSIN — Several Wisconsin hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

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 more than 30 measures of patient safety. 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.

Several Wisconsin hospitals received an "A" grade including ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Appleton, HSHS St. Mary's Hospital of Green Bay, Sauk Prairie Hospital, Mayo Clinic Health System - Eau Claire, Bellin Memorial Hospital, HSHS St Joseph's Hospital, HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital, and Mayo Clinic Health System - La Crosse.

No hospital ranked in Wisconsin received an F grade on the Leapfrog list.

Here are the ratings for hospitals in greater Milwaukee, according to Leapfrog:

A

None.

B

ProHealth Waukesha Memorial Hospital
Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital - St. Joseph Campus
Froedtert Hospital

C

Ascension Columbia St Mary's Hospital Ozaukee
Ascension Columbia St Mary's Hospital Milwaukee
ProHealth Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital
Ascension St. Francis Hospital
Froedtert Menomonee Falls Hospital
Aurora West Allis Medical Center
Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital - Elmbrook Campus
Aurora Medical Center Grafton

D

Aurora St. Luke's South Shore of Aurora Health Care Metro
Aurora Sinai Medical Center
Aurora St Luke's Medical Center of Aurora Health Care Metro, Inc

"We firmly believe that meaningful quality and safety data should be transparent to the public," Advocate Aurora Health told Patch in a statement. "However, accurately measuring this data can be challenging, and some organizations use limited methodologies that don’t always reflect the quality of care or the varied factors that contribute to patient outcomes. We have a robust plan in place to drive continued improvement in both safety and health outcomes for our patients."

Patch reached out to hospitals that received a C grade or lower in the Milwaukee area. This article will be updated if we hear back.

With the release of its fall report, The Leapfrog Group has analyzed hospital safety data for a decade. Most hospitals have improved over time under more public scrutiny, Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“For a long time, the health care community tried to improve safety, but progress stalled,” Binder said. “The big difference over this decade is that for the first time, we publicly reported each hospital’s record on patient safety, and that galvanized the kind of change we all hoped for.

“It’s not enough change, but we are on the right track,” she said.

Notably, hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

Also, according to the report, progress on the number of patients treated for health care-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly two dozen hospitals have received straight-A reports every year since the Leapfrog Group began its safety grades in 2012. They are:

• Arizona: Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix.
• California: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo.
• Colorado: Rose Medical Center, Denver.
• Florida: AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach.
• Illinois: Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst; Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield; University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago.
• Massachusetts: Beverly Hospital, Beverly; Saint Anne's Hospital, Fall River.
• Michigan: University of Michigan Health, Ann Arbor.
• Mississippi: Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle, Columbus.
• North Carolina: Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh.
• Ohio: OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin;OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware.
• Texas: St. David's Medical Center, Austin.
• Virginia: Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg; Sentara CarePlex Hospital, Hampton; Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg.
• Washington: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle.

Search for your hospital’s fall 2022 safety grade and read more about the methodology.