Local Jefferson Hospitals Get A Grade For Safety

Jefferson Hospital locations in both Stratford and Washington Township received A grades in hospital safety, according to new fall 2019 ratings released Thursday by the Leapfrog Group. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 33 percent earned an A grade, a 1 percent increase from the last round of safety grades, released in Spring 2019.

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.

Jefferson Health New Jersey President Joseph W. Devine said the healthcare organization is “extremely proud that its three hospitals have been recognized for their commitment to patient safety with ‘A’ grades in this highly respected national rating.”

“A grades confirm Jefferson’s continual, strong commitment to patient safety as our top priority,” Jefferson Health New Jersey Chief Patient Safety & Quality Officer, Dr. David Condoluci said.

“It takes genuine commitment at every level — from clinicians to administrators to the board of directors — and we congratulate the teams who have worked so hard to earn this A,” Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder said.

The release of the Fall 2019 safety grades coincides with the 20th anniversary of a published report that revealed nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year because of preventable medical errors.

“In stark contrast to 20 years ago, we’re now able to pinpoint where the problems are, and that allows us to grade hospitals,” Binder said. “It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process.”

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 performance measures taken from federal government data and the group’s own hospital survey to “produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.” The group relies on a panel of experts to select the measures used in the methodology and to develop a scoring system. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

See related: New NJ Hospital Safety Ratings Released: 2 Get 'D' Grade