Leapfrog safety data spotlights persistent gaps; Florida hospitals sue

Editor's Note

For the first time, the Spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grade from The Leapfrog Group introduces a “Straight A” designation for facilities that have earned top marks across five or more consecutive grading cycles. Published May 1, the latest edition of this biannual safety grade shows 346 hospitals—just 12% of eligible facilities—met this bar, including 11 hospitals that have earned A grades in every grading round since Leapfrog launched the system in 2012. “Patient safety is a relentless, never-ending quest to put patients first,” Leah Binder, president and CEO, The Leapfrog Group, said about the change. “Sustaining an A over multiple years reflects a deep-rooted commitment to patient safety.” 

Although more than 30% of hospitals earned an A this spring, safety performance remains uneven across states. Utah led the nation for the fourth consecutive grading cycle in the share of A-grade hospitals and tied with Connecticut for the highest proportion of “Straight A” hospitals at 29%. Yet 13 states and Washington, D.C., had no hospitals meeting the straight-A threshold, and four states—Iowa, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming—reported no A-grade hospitals.

Notable among this spring’s high performers were Mayo Clinic-Phoenix, University of Chicago Medical Center, Virginia Mason Medical Center, and several Sentara and Kaiser Permanente facilities, all recognized for sustaining A grades over 13 years. Leapfrog also noted significant improvement in Washington, DC, which climbed to 11th in overall A-grade share after years at the bottom of the rankings.

Touted by Leapfrog as the only national hospital ratings program focused exclusively on preventable harm, the program assigns letter grades based on publicly reported data covering medical errors, injuries, accidents, and infections—issues that impact one in four US inpatients and contribute to an estimated 250,000 deaths each year.

In related news, five South Florida hospitals are accusing the group of crafting misleading safety rankings that endanger patients as part of a ‘brazen pay-to-play scheme,’” the Miamia Herald reported May 1. The five hospitals—Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Delray Medical Center, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, West Boca Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach—are all part of Tenet Healthcare. As detailed in the article, the suit alleges Leapfrog “pressures hospitals to participate and pay, or else suffer devastating and misleading” public safety grades. Read more at The Miami Herald.