Health & Fitness

California Hospital Safety Grades Released For 2017

How safe is your hospital? Leapfrog Group has announced its spring 2017 ratings, grading CA hospitals from A to F for patient safety.

Renee Schiavone's profile picture
Renee Schiavone, Patch StaffVerified Patch Staff Badge
|

How safe are California's hospitals? Updated grades recently released by The Leapfrog Group will tell you just that. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by employers and health care providers, ranked nearly 300 Golden State hospitals as part of its spring 2017 safety grades.

The hospitals were given a letter grade from A through F based on several factors. Of the 271 California hospitals that were graded, 68 of them received an A. Six of them received an F. In between, there were 79 B hospitals, 93 C hospitals and 25 D hospitals.

To come up with the grades, Leapfrog looks at things like medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The goal is to determine what a patient's risk of further injury or infection is if they visit a certain hospital.

Find out what's happening in Temeculafor free with the latest updates from Patch.

According to the organization, more than 1,000 Americans die each day from preventable hospital errors. Hospitals given a B rating by Leapfrog had a 9 percent higher risk of avoidable death than A hospitals. That number jumps to 35 percent in C hospitals and 50 percent higher in D and F hospitals.

At the state level, Maine was ranked No. 1. Hawaii, Oregon, Wisconsin and Idaho rounded out the top five.

Find out what's happening in Temeculafor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Since Leapfrog began its ratings in 2012, the organization says there have been significant strides in improving patient safety, such as a 21 percent decrease in hospital-acquired conditions, increased use of computerized physician order entry systems and millions of averted patient harms. More than 1,000 people a day are estimated to die from preventable errors, making this the third leading cause of death in America.

“When we launched the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade in 2012, our goal was to alert consumers to the hazards involved in a hospital stay and help them choose the safest option. We also hoped to galvanize hospitals to make safety the first priority day in and day out,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog.

Here are the grades the California hospitals received. (Visit the full list to learn more about individual rankings.)

A:

B:

C:

D:

F:

Curious as to how your hospital performed in the previous Leapfrog report? Here are the rankings from November.

Patch Editor Deb Belt (Patch Staff) contributed to this report / Image via Shutterstock

Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

More from Temecula