Health & Fitness

UMass Hospitals Get C's: Safest Hospitals in Massachusetts

Both UMass campuses received a "C" in this latest safest hospitals survey from Leapfrog.

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Charlene Arsenault, Patch StaffVerified Patch Staff Badge

WORCESTER, MA—How safe is your hospital? New grades released Wednesday by The Leapfrog Group will tell you just that. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by employers and healthcare providers, ranked 60 Massachusetts hospitals as part of its Spring 2017 safety grades.

UMass Memorial, both the University Campus and Memorial Campus, received C grades this time around. The University Campus has consistently received C grades dating back to 2014, two surveys per year. The Memorial Campus, too, has gotten all C's except for the Fall of 2015, when it got a B.

The hospitals were given a letter grade from A through F based on several factors. More than half of the 60 Massachusetts hospitals that were graded - 31 - received an A. None received a grade lower than a C.
To come up with the grades, Leapfrog looks at medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The goal is to determine what a patient's risk of further injury or infection is if they visit a certain hospital.

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According to the organization, more than 1,000 Americans die each day from preventable hospital errors. 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.

Here is a look at the hospitals that received A grades. (Visit the full list to learn more about individual rankings and see the full list.)

Kara Seymour and Mike Carraggi, Patch staff, contributed to this report

Photo via Shutterstock

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