Minnesota Hospital Safety Grades: 3 Hospitals Get ‘D’ Grade

MINNESOTA — Several Minnesota hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new Spring 2019 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group on Wednesday. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade, findings that were unchanged from the group’s last round of rankings released in Fall 2018.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Oregon, Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts and Virginia had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Four states — Wyoming, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota — and the District of Columbia did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

Here are the grades Minnesota hospitals were given by the Leapfrog Group:

A

• Fairview Range, Hibbing
• Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital, Grand Rapids
• Lake Region Healthcare, Fergus Falls
• Lakeview Hospital, Stillwater
• Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital, St. Louis Park
• Woodwinds Health Campus, Woodbury

B

• Alomere Hospital, Alexandria
• Essentia Health - Saint Joseph's Medical Center, Brainerd
• Fairview Southdale Hospital, Edina
• Maple Grove Hospital, Maple Grove
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Albert Lea and Austin – Austin Campus, Austin
• Mayo Clinic Health System In Red Wing, Red Wing
• Mercy Hospital - Unity Campus, Fridley
• Mercy Hospital Coon Rapids, Coon Rapids
• St. Cloud Hospital, St. Cloud
• St. Francis Regional Medical Center, Shakopee
• United Hospital of St. Paul, St. Paul

C

• Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis
• Essentia Health - Virginia Clinic, Virginia
• Essentia Health Saint Mary's Medical Center, Duluth
• Fairview Ridges Hospital, Burnsville
• Healtheast St. John's Hospital, Maplewood
• Healtheast St. Joseph's Hospital, St. Paul
• Mayo Clinic Health System - Mankato Hospital, Mankato
• Mayo Clinic Hospital - Methodist Campus, Rochester
• Mayo Clinic Hospital - Saint Marys Campus, Rochester
• Regions Hospital, St. Paul
• Rice Memorial Hospital, Willmar
• Ridgeview Medical Center, Waconia
• St. Luke's Hospital, Duluth
• University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview - West Bank Campus, Minneapolis
• Winona Health, Winona

D

• Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis
• North Memorial Health Hospital, Robbinsdale
• Sanford Bemidji Medical Center, Bemidji

For this round of rankings, the Leapfrog Group’s research found that patients at hospitals that receive “D” or “F” grades face a 92 percent greater risk of avoidable death compared to “A” hospitals. At “C” and “B” hospitals, patients on average face an 88 percent and a 35 percent greater risk respectively.

The group estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at “A” hospitals, 50,000 lives would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

“The good news is that tens of thousands of lives have been saved because of progress on patient safety. The bad news is that there’s still a lot of needless death and harm in American hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “Hospitals don’t all have the same track record, so it really matters which hospital people choose, which is the purpose of our Hospital Safety Grade.”

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 28 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.)