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

NEW JERSEY – Thirty-one New Jersey hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new fall 2019 ratings released Thursday by the Leapfrog Group. Others didn't fare so well, and you may be surprised to see who received a poor grade (see list below).

The nonprofit 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.

In New Jersey, 12 hospitals got C grades while another 2 got Ds. Efforts to obtain comment from those two hospitals were not immediately successful.

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

A

• CentraState Medical Center, Freehold
• Chilton Medical Center, Pompton Plains
• Community Medical Center of Toms River
• Englewood Hospital and Medical Center
• Hackensack Meridian Health Pascack Valley Medical Center, Westwood
• Holy Name Medical Center, Teaneck
• Inspira Medical Center Elmer
• Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital
• Jefferson Stratford Hospital
• Jefferson Washington Township Hospital, Turnersville
• Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune
• Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch
• Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus, Lakewood
• Morristown Medical Center
• Newark Beth Israel Medical Center
• Newton Medical Center
• Ocean Medical Center, Brick
• Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center, Plainsboro
• Raritan Bay Medical Center of Perth Amboy, Perth Amboy
• Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank
• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton
• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Rahway
• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset, Somerville
• Saint Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston
• Saint Clare's Hospital of Denville
• Saint Clare's Hospital of Dover
• Saint Michael's Medical Center, Newark
• Saint Peter's University Hospital, New Brunswick
• Shore Medical Center, Somers Point
• St. Luke's Warren Campus, Phillipsburg
• Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Camden

B

• Atlanticare Regional Medical Center - City Campus, Atlantic City
• Atlanticare Regional Medical Center-Mainland Campus, Pomona
• Capital Health Medical Center - Hopewell, Pennington
• CarePoint Health-Bayonne Medical Center, Bayonne
• Carepoint Health-Hoboken University Medical Center
• Clara Maass Medical Center, Belleville
• Cooper University Hospital, Camden
• Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center, North Bergen
• Hackensack University Medical Center
• HMH JFK Medical Center, Edison
• Hunterdon Medical Center, Flemington
• Inspira Medical Center Vineland
• Jersey City Medical Center
• Overlook Medical Center, Summit
• Raritan Bay Medical Center of Old Bridge, Old Bridge
• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick
• Salem Medical Center
• Southern Ocean Medical Center, Manahawkin
• St. Francis Medical Center of Trenton
• St. Mary's General Hospital, Passaic
• The Valley Hospital, Ridgewood
• Virtua Marlton Hospital, Marlton
• Virtua Voorhees Hospital
• Virtua Willingboro

C

• Bayshore Medical Center, Holmdel
• Cape Regional Medical Center, Cape May Court House
• Capital Health Regional Medical Center, Trenton
• CarePoint Health-Christ Hospital, Jersey City
• Hackensack Meridian Health Mountainside Medical Center, Montclair
• Hackettstown Regional Medical Center
• Hudson Regional Hospital, Secaucus
• Inspira Medical Center Woodbury, Woodbury
• St. Joseph's University Medical Center, Paterson
• St. Joseph's Wayne Medical Center, Wayne
• Trinitas Regional Medical Center, Elizabeth
• Virtua Memorial Hospital, Mount Holly

D

• East Orange General Hospital
• University Hospital, Newark

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.

Maine, Utah, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Three states — Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota — did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

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,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “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.)