Hospital quality watchdog Leapfrog is out with its spring ratings of hospitals, and although 798 hospitals scored an A grade and 639 hospitals got a B, that leaves 2,134 hospitals with Cs, Ds or Fs.
Whether you’re one to look at the glass half full or half empty, consider these numbers: The A and B hospitals together number 1,437 – while the C,D, and F hospitals combined number 2,134, or 607 more not "making the grade," so to speak.
According to the report, 957 hospitals rated a C, 1,162 a D and 15 an F.
Leapfrog also contracted with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality to estimate the number of avoidable deaths at hospitals at each grade level. The analysis concluded that in spite of improvements made since 2012 when Leapfrog started scoring, avoidable deaths remain high.
[Also: Deaths by medical mistakes hit records.]
In total, it showed an estimated 206,021 avoidable deaths occur in U.S. hospitals each year, a figure described as an underestimate in the analysis because the measure only accounts for a subset of avoidable harms patients may encounter in the hospital. Of the avoidable deaths in all hospitals, 162,117 occur in B, C, D, and F hospitals.
The analysis concluded an estimated 33,439 lives could be saved each year if all hospitals had the same performance as those receiving an A.
For the Spring 2016 report, Leapfrog said it considered data on two new infection measures, MRSA Bacteremia and C.difficile, both of which can have deadly consequences if patients contract these infections in a hospital setting.
"It is time for every hospital in America to put patient safety at the top of their priority list, because tens of thousands of lives are stake," said Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder, in a statement.
"The Hospital Safety Score alerts consumers to the dangers, but as this analysis shows, even A hospitals are not perfectly safe," she said.