Hospitals Near Marblehead Earn Mixed Patient Safety Grades

With reporting by Marc Torrence (Patch National Staff)

MARBLEHEAD, MA — Major hospitals near Marblehead earned mixed grades in national patient safety rankings.

The nonprofit Leapfrog Group, founded by employers and health-care providers, on Monday announced its Spring 2016 hospital safety rankings, a measure of how safe a hospital is for patients.

These are the letter grades given to local hospitals:

• Beverly Hospital, A
• North Shore Medical Center (Salem), C
• North Shore Medical Center (Lynn), C

At the state level, Vermont's hospitals were ranked the safest in the U.S. Massachusetts was No. 4.

Leapfrog also conducted an analysis with researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. They estimated that 206,021 avoidable deaths occur each year in U.S. hospitals.

Hospitals were given a letter grade from A through F based on several factors. 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.

• Search all hospital safety scores

Leapfrog looked at medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections to determine the grades. The goal was to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visited a certain hospital.

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.

The analysis estimates that 33,459 lives could be saved if every hospital improved their safety record to A standards. Still, the study estimates 43,903 avoidable deaths in A hospitals each year.

Leapfrog releases its rankings twice a year.

“It is time for every hospital in America to put patient safety at the top of their priority list, because tens of thousands of lives are stake,” Leapfrog President Leah Binder said in a press release. “The Hospital Safety Score alerts consumers to the dangers, but as this analysis shows, even A hospitals are not perfectly safe.”