The Leapfrog Group released the fall 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade results. This release marks the 10th anniversary of the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, which assigns a letter grade to nearly 3,000 U.S. general hospitals based on how well they protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.
An analysis by The Leapfrog Group of data across the Hospital Safety Grade’s history suggests improvement in patient safety over time. Measures used in the Hospital Safety Grade have changed over time, but measures that could be reliably tracked over the decade show a consistent pattern of better performance. For five of the outcome measures that can be tracked, these improvements saved an estimated more than 16,000 lives over the 10-year period.
Measures that have shown significant improvement over the decade include some never events, meaning medical events that should never happen. Two never events that both decreased by around 25% include incidents of falls and trauma and incidents of objects unintentionally left in a body after surgery.
There was also encouraging pre-pandemic progress on healthcare-associated infections, including:
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) decreased by 22%
- Central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) decreased by 43%
- Clostridioides difficile infection (C. Diff) decreased by 8%
Highlights from the fall 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:
- Thirty percent of hospitals received an “A,” 28% received a “B,” 36% received a “C,” 6% received
a “D,” and 1% received an “F.” - The top ten states with the highest percentages of “A” hospitals are New Hampshire, Virginia,
Utah, Colorado, Idaho, New Jersey, North Carolia, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Florida. - There were no “A” hospitals in the District of Columbia, North Dakota, or Vermont.
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