Safest Hospitals In Maryland: FULL LIST

BALTIMORE, MD — Only one Maryland hospital earned an A in hospital safety and one of its 44 hospitals received an F, according to new grades released by The Leapfrog Group this week. The nonprofit organization issues its hospital safety grades twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

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.

"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. "What we’ve learned is that transparency has a real impact on patient safety."

There were only 15 hospitals nationwide that were given an F grade, and Maryland is home to one of them.

At Baltimore's allegedly failing hospital — Bon Secours — the data showed that MRSA infections as well as blood infections and urinary tract infections during ICU stays were higher than expected. In addition, the number of surgical wounds that split open after major stomach or abdominal surgeries was denoted as high.

Bon Secours disputed the grade, telling USA Today "it does not accurately reflect our quality" or the hospital's function in the community as a link to jobs and housing.

The only hospital in Maryland in the rankings to receive an A grade was Howard County General in Columbia.

• Howard County General Hospital Receives A For Patient Safety

This year marks the first time that Maryland was included in the rankings, which have been released since 2012; previously, Leapfrog said it was unable to obtain data at a national level because of a federal waiver that exempted Maryland from reporting key safety metrics.

"We commend the Maryland Health Care Commission for their leadership, which was instrumental in getting Leapfrog the data needed to issue these grades," Binder said. "As a Maryland resident myself, I appreciate this level of transparency.”

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C, D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. 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. 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 grades that Maryland's 44 hospitals received, according to Leapfrog:

• Howard County General Hospital, Columbia - A
• Garrett Regional Medical Center, Oakland - B
• MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Baltimore - B
• Mercy Medical Center, Baltimore - B
• Northwest Hospital, Randallstown - B
• Suburban Hospital, Bethesda - B
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore - B
• University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, Towson - B
• Adventist HealthCare Washington Adventist Hospital, Takoma Park - C
• Anne Arundel Medical Center, Annapolis - C
• Atlantic General Hospital, Berlin - C
• Calvert Memorial Hospital, Prince Frederick - C
• Carroll Hospital Center, Westminster - C
• Doctors Community Hospital, Lanham - C
• Frederick Memorial Hospital, Frederick - C
• Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Towson - C
• Holy Cross Hospital, Silver Spring - C
• Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore - C
• MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center, Baltimore - C
• MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital, Baltimore - C
• MedStar Harbor Hospital, Brooklyn - C
• MedStar Montgomery Medical Center, Olney - C
• MedStar St. Mary's Hospital, Leonardtown - C
• Meritus Medical Center, Hagerstown - C
• Peninsula Regional Medical Center, Salibury - C
• Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, Baltimore - C
• UM Baltimore Washington Medical Center, Glen Burnie - C
• Union Hospital, Elkton - C
• University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center, La Plata - C
• University of Maryland Harford Memorial Hospital, Havre de Grace - C
• University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore - C
• University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Chestertown, Chestertown - C
• University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Dorchester, Cambridge - C
• University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Easton, Easton - C
• University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, Bel Air - C
• Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, Rockville - D
• Fort Washington Medical Center, Fort Washington - D
• MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center, Clinton - D
• St. Agnes Hospital, Baltimore - D
• University of Maryland Laurel Regional Hospital, Laurel - D
• University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus, Baltimore - D
• University of Maryland Prince George's Hospital Center, Cheverly - D
• Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, Cumberland - D
• Bon Secours Baltimore Health System, Baltimore - F

Of the 2,632 hospitals graded for this year, Leapfrog reported that 832 earned As, 662 received Bs, 964 earned Cs, 159 got Ds and 15 received an F.

Maryland was among a handful of jurisdictions containing a hospital was graded an F. Only six states and the District of Columbia had hospitals with a failing grade, according to Leapfrog: California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, New York and Washington, D.C.

The report released on Tuesday showed that Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho and Virginia had the highest percentage of hospitals with an A grade, while Maryland, Delaware, New York, North Dakota and Washington, D.C., had the lowest percentage of A hospitals.

— By Patch editors Feroze Dhanoa and Elizabeth Janney

Image via Shutterstock.