The Leapfrog Group announced its 2021 hospital grades recently, including from Washington State. How did your hospital fare? These grades are based on how safe the hospital is: each hospital is assigned a letter grade based on how well it prevents medical errors, accidents, and injuries.
Several hospitals received an “A” grade, including both of Swedish’s Seattle campuses (Cherry Hill and First Hill), Virginia Mason, Kadlec in Richland, and PeaceHealth hospitals in both Vancouver and Bellingham. On the other end of the spectrum, while no hospital received an “F”, Evergreen Health Monroe was the only hospital to receive a “D” grade.
Its website describes the Leapfrog Group as “a national leader and advocate in hospital transparency.” The Group has been around for twenty years, and their hospital ratings are released annually in the fall. The ratings are based on reporting from the hospitals in response to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. The self reports are then compared to hospitals across the nation (rather than regionally), and the hospitals are scored according to how they compare to the other responding hospitals. Not all hospitals participate in the survey, so the survey is not meant to be comprehensive.
The ten major areas of inquiry, each with multiple subgroups, are: Preventing and Responding to Patient Harm, Medication Safety, Healthcare Associated Infections, Maternity Care, Pediatric Care, Critical care, Complex Adult Surgery, Care for Elective Outpatient Surgery Patients, Elective Outpatient surgery – Adult, and Elective Outpatient Surgery – Pediatric.
You can read more about it, and search your hospital’s grade, here. Something worth noting: in reviewing the grades of hospitals in Washington, those of some hospital chains tend to fare better than others. Furthermore, you can see the details of how your local hospital compares by clicking the “view the full score” button for each hospital. With that option, you can really use the survey as a research tool if you in fact have a choice of where to receive care.
