New Hampshire Hospital Safety Grades Released For Fall 2018

Four New Hampshire hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety in the new Fall 2018 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group on Thursday. That accounted for 30.7 percent of the state's hospitals - the 25th-highest percentage in the country - and was a seven percent increase from the spring rankings.

Four hospitals received a B, while five received a C. No hospitals in the state received a grade lower than a C.

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.

>>>Related: Best Hospitals In New Hampshire

Here are the grades New Hampshire hospitals were given by the Leapfrog Group:

A grades

Frisbie Memorial Hospital, Rochester

Parkland Medical Center, Derry

Portsmouth Regional Hospital

Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Dover

B grades

Concord Hospital

Exeter Hospital

Lakes Region General Hospital, Laconia

St. Joseph Hospital of Nashua

C grades

Catholic Medical Center, Manchester

Cheshire Medical Center, Keene

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon

Elliot Hospital, Manchester

Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, Nashua

The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade.

New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts and Texas had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. The states with the lowest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade are Connecticut, Nebraska, Washington D.C., Delaware and North Dakota, according to Leapfrog. Washington D.C., Delaware and North Dakota did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

"Health care was an important issue in the 2018 midterm elections, yet both parties are still neglecting the third leading cause of death in America—errors and infections in hospitals," Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. "Every elected official, from city councilors, to senators, to the President, should hold hospitals accountable and support efforts to improve patient safety."

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.)

Image via shutterstock