Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
States That Got Top Hospital Quality Grades Put In Concentrated Efforts To Improve
Fifteen U.S. hospitals聽鈥 including two in Washington, D.C.聽鈥 received failing grades in a new report on 2,600 hospitals released Tuesday that includes all 50 states for the first time.聽Maryland, which was previously exempted from providing hospital safety reports due to a special waiver, now ranks 46th on the non-profit Leapfrog Group's latest state rankings. (O'Donnell, 10/31)
The latest Hospital Safety Grade report released Tuesday by the Leapfrog Group again demonstrates the large differences in patient safety between hospitals, even among those in the same state or region. In the 10th edition of the report, patient safety performance by hospitals in states varied widely. For example, the report showed Connecticut had seven hospitals that received "A" grades, four that got a "B" grade and 13 that received "C" grades. (Castellucci, 10/31)
Twenty-two hospitals in southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey that received the top 鈥淎鈥 grade in the fall 2017 Leapfrog hospital safety grades announced Tuesday. The Leapfrog Group uses 27 national performance measures to grade a hospital鈥檚 overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. Taken together, those performance measures produce a single letter grade from 鈥淎鈥 to 鈥淔.鈥 (George, 10/31)
Hospitals in D.C. and Maryland lag far behind Virginia hospitals when it comes to patient safety, according to a new scorecard released Tuesday by nonprofit health watchdog Leapfrog. Leapfrog released its Hospital Safety Grades on Tuesday, assigning hospitals nationwide an A, B, C, D or F grade based on a variety of criteria. The study focuses on how safe patients are at each facility from preventable harm or medical errors. (Nadeem and Moore, 10/31)
Three area hospitals -- Doctors Hospital of Sarasota, Englewood Community Hospital and Sarasota Memorial Hospital -- retained their A grades in the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade report for fall 2017. This places them among the top 31 percent of health care systems nationwide, and the top 30 percent in Florida. (10/31)
Connecticut hospitals rank 30th nationwide when it comes to avoiding medical errors, injuries and infections, a new report released Tuesday finds. Some 2,630 hospitals across 50 states were assigned letter grades based on a range of patient safety measures and ranked based on their percentage of 鈥淎鈥 hospitals, according to Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization. (10/31)
Indiana ranks in the middle of the country for its hospitals鈥 safety grades. About one-third of 59 Indiana acute care facilities surveyed by the LeapFrog Group received As in a report released Tuesday. (Flanery, 10/31)
Georgia stayed in 40th place among states in percentages of hospitals with top safety ratings, in the latest report from the Leapfrog Group. ... Fourteen of the 74 Georgia hospitals that were rated got 鈥淎鈥檚鈥 from Leapfrog, a patient safety organization founded by employers, which issues the rankings semi-annually. (Miller, 10/31)