Health & Fitness

RWJ University Hospital Somerset Earns 'A' Grade For Safety

The nonprofit group Leapfrog released its bi-annual round of hospital safety grades.

SOMERSET, NJ — Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset earned an "A" grade in safety, according to a new list of grades released by The Leapfrog Group Tuesday.

This is the second year in a row the hospital was graded "A." The goal of the rankings is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital. Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades.

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 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.

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The hospital scored "above average" in several categories, including ensuring a patient's safety during and safety surgery, training staff on proper hand-washing techniques and preventing bed sores.

Leapfrog 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.)

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Nearby hospitals including Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick and Morristown Medical Center in Morristown both also received an "A" grade.

While Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington received a "B" grade and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick received a "C" grade.

To see the full list of how other New Jersey hospitals ranked CLICK HERE.

(Image via Shutterstock)

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