These Are The Safest Hospitals In Metro Denver, Nonprofit Says

DENVER, CO -- Nine Metro Denver hospitals received an A in hospital safety, according to new grades released by The Leapfrog Group on Tuesday. But in Littleton, Centura Health-Littleton Adventist Hospital was rated a C by the group. The hospital fell in rankings from an A in Spring 2017.

The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The grades released on Tuesday showed that five states — Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho — showed significant improvement since the safety grades were first implemented in 2012.

"Errors and infections in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America, and people deserve to know which of their hospitals are best at preventing them," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a press release.

Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades. The goal of the rankings is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 27 measures that are taken together to produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

According to the scoring system, Centura Health-Littleton Adventist Hospital in Littleton had among the highest national level of urinary tract infections during patient ICU stays between Jan., 2015- June, 2016 of all hospitals surveyed nationally. The Littleton hospital also had higher-than-average Surgical site infections after colon surgery and other infections. See the data here.

No hospital in Colorado received a grade below C.

The group uses performance measures from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

Here are the Metro Denver hospitals that received an A:

1. Centura Health-Porter Adventist Hospital, Denver
2. Lutheran Medical Center, Wheat Ridge
3. Medical Center of Aurora, Aurora
4. North Suburban Medical Center, Thornton
5. Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Denver
6. Rose Medical Center, Denver
7. Saint Joseph Hospital, Denver
8. Sky Ridge Medical Center, Lone Tree
9. Swedish Medical Center, Englewood

Click here to see how every Colorado hospital was ranked.

Leapfrog notes that of the 2,632 hospitals graded in Tuesday's update, 832 earned an "A," 662 a "B," 964 a "C," 159 a "D" and 15 an "F."

By Kara Seymour, Patch National Staff

Image via Pixabay