Florida Hospital Safety Grades 2022: The Best And Worst

FLORIDA — More than 60 hospitals in Florida received top marks for patient safety, but others didn’t quite measure up in the Spring 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group.

The 2022 ratings reflect care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Leapfrog Group said its and other groups’ research showed the pandemic reversed years of progress in patient safety.

The pandemic has had a negative effect on “health care delivery at every level and setting, from staffing shortages to increased infections to the very care patients receive,” according to the Adult Patient Experience at Acute Care Hospitals survey, also released Tuesday by The Leapfrog Group.

“The health care workforce has faced unprecedented levels of pressure during the pandemic, and as a result, patients' experience with their care appears to have suffered,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “We commend the workforce for their heroic efforts these past few years and now strongly urge hospital leadership to recommit to improved care — from communication to responsiveness — and get back on track with patient safety outcomes.”

In Florida, 64 hospitals received an "A" grade, 54 hospitals received a "B" grade, 59 hospitals received a "C" grade, two hospitals received a "D" grade and one earned an "F" grade.

The lone "F" grade went to Halifax Health Medical Center in Port Orange.

Here are the rankings of Tampa-St. Pete-Sarasota area hospitals, plus Miami facilities, according to Leapfrog:

A

• AdventHealth Carrollwood, Tampa
• AdventHealth Dade City, Dade City
• AdventHealth North Pinellas, Tarpon Springs
• AdventHealth Tampa, Tampa
• AdventHealth Wesley Chapel, Wesley Chapel
• AdventHealth Winter Park, Winter Park
• AdventHealth Zephyrhills, Zephyrhills
• Mease Countryside Hospital, Safety Harbor
• Mease Dunedin Hospital, Dunedin
• Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater
• Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, New Port Richey
• Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota
• St. Anthony's Hospital, St. Petersburg
• St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa
• St. Joseph's Hospital - South, Riverview
• St. Lucie Medical Center, Port St. Lucie
• St. Petersburg General Hospital, St. Petersburg

B

• Brandon Regional Hospital, Brandon
• Doctors Hospital of Sarasota, Sarasota
• JFK Medical Center North Campus, West Palm Beach
• Larkin Community Hospital, South Miami
• Northside Hospital St. Petersburg
• Palms of Pasadena Hospital, St. Petersburg
• South Florida Baptist Hospital, Plant City
• St. Joseph's Hospital North, Lutz

C

• Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, Aventura
• Baptist Health Baptist Hospital of Miami, Miami
• Baptist Health Homestead Hospital, Homestead
• Baptist Health South Miami Hospital, South Miami
• Baptist Health West Kendall Baptist Hospital, Miami
• Bartow Regional Medical Center, Bartow
• Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg
• Blake Medical Center, Bradenton
• Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami
• Jackson North Medical Center, North Miami Beach
• Jackson South Medical Center, Miami
• Kendall Regional Medical Center, Miami
• Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Lakeland
• Manatee Memorial Hospital, Bradenton
• Memorial Hospital of Tampa, Tampa
• Mercy Hospital, Miami
• Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami Beach
• North Shore Medical Center, Miami
• St. Mary's Medical Center, West Palm Beach
• Tampa General Hospital, Tampa

The letter grades assigned to nearly 3,000 U.S general hospitals were based on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

Included in the 30 are five that research has shown to directly affect patient outcomes, but can be improved with greater communication between caregivers and patients — the number of central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, infections from colon surgery, MRSA (Staphylococcus) blood laboratory-identified events, and facility-wide inpatient diarrhea events.

When there’s communication about medications, for example, that can lead to fewer hospitalizations for conditions such as sepsis and blood clots, fewer complications, and decreases in the incidence of respiratory failure, Leapfrog said.

Among the findings:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an “A,” 24 percent received a “B,” 36 percent received a “C,” 7 percent received a “D.” and fewer than 1 percent received an “F”.
• The states with the highest percentages of “A” hospitals are North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Colorado and Michigan.
• There were no “A” hospitals in Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota or the District of Columbia.

To determine each hospital’s grade, a panel of medical experts selected 30 evidence-based measures of patient safety such as postoperative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injury. They then determined the weight of each measure based on evidence, opportunity for improvement and patient impact.

Data on each measure was collected through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Information from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, available to all hospitals to complete, also affects grades.

Currently, Leapfrog does not assign grades to military or Veterans Administration hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children’s hospitals or outpatient surgery centers.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade methodology has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.

The full methodology for the 2022 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is available online.