Glenbrook Hospital Earns a 'C' for Safety From Health-Care Group

GLENVIEW, IL―Glenbrook Hospital received a "C" grade for safety from a national health care nonprofit group.

RELATED: Check Out Glenbrook Hospital's Full Evaluation

The Leapfrog Group, an organization of employers and health-care providers, released its Spring 2016 hospital safety rankings Monday. Hospitals are graded from A through F based on several factors, such as medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections, to determine a patient's risk of further harm if they visited that facility.

Of the 2,571 hospitals studied nationwide, 798 earned an A, 639 earned a B, 957 earned a C, 162 earned a D and 15 earned an F.

Glenbrook Hospital, which is part of NorthShore University HealthSystem, received its middling grade because it declined to report information in a variety of evaluation categories, a common practice among Northshore facilities. Those included the following:

• staff accurately record patient medications
• handwashing
• staff works together to prevent errors
• training to improve safety
• enough qualified nurses
• track and reduce risks to patients

RELATED: Check Out Leapfrog's Complete State Safety Rankings

According to its evaluation, Glenbrook Hospital excelled in the categories dealing with preventing infections, as well as certain surgical problem prevention areas. The facility's worse category, however, was preventing dangerous surgical blood clots, receiving the worst score for a hospital in that category.

The C grade is drop from previous years, when Glenbrook earned A's and B's in the fall and spring evaluations.

Overall, Illinois ranked 15th in the nation, according to Leapfrog. The group evaluated 115 hospitals in the state, and 50 of them, 43.5 percent, earned an A.

Other hospitals in the area earned the following grades (hospitals in bold italics earned A's):

• Advocate Condell Medical Center, Libertyville: A
• Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital, Barrington: B
• Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge: A
• AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Elk Grove Village: A
• AMITA Health St. Alexius Medical Center, Hoffman Estates: A
• Loyola Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, Melrose Park: A
• NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston: C
• NorthShore University HealthSystem, Highland Park: C
• NorthShore University HealhSystem, Skokie: C
• Northwest Community Hospital, Arlington Heights: A
• Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, Lake Forest: C

Patch editor By Marc Torrence contributed to this report.

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