Middlesex County Hospital Grades: How JFK, Saint Peter's, RWJ Scored

MIDDLESEX COUNTY — The Leapfrog Group just released their Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report Wednesday.

Of the two hospitals in New Brunswick, Saint Peter's University Hospital received an "A" grade and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital received a "B" grade.

Robert Wood Johnson is connected to Rutgers University and is owned by RWJBarnabas. Saint Peter's is a Catholic hospital owned by the Catholic church.

JFK University Medical Center in Edison received a "B" grade. JFK is operated by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Here are the Fall 2022 Leapfrog grades for all the hospitals in Middlesex County, plus the RWJ hospital in Rahway (it got an "A") and Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy (it also got an "A"): https://www.hospitalsafetygrad...

Leapfrog is a respected non-profit agency that determines hospital safety nationwide. For the past 10 years, they have released their hospital grade rankings every spring and fall.

The grades are always closely watched. Some hospitals, such as this one in Chicago, have even sued Leapfrog when they get a "C" or "D" grade.

Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

Leapfrog looks at the following in hospitals: Rates of infection, such as MRSA, C. diff and colon or sepsis infections after surgery; the rates of problems that occur after surgery; safety problems that occur in the hospital, such as the rates of patients with bed sores or the rates of patients who fall; handwashing rates; how well hospital staff works together; the qualification of nurses and how well hospital staff communicates with each other.

Most hospitals have improved over time under more public scrutiny, Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release Wednesday.

“The big difference over this decade is that for the first time, we publicly reported each hospital’s record on patient safety, and that galvanized the kind of change we all hoped for," said Binder.

Notably, hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

The grading system is peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. Hospital safety grades are based on more than 30 national performance measures and are updated each fall and spring.

In New Jersey, 33 hospitals received an A, 20 hospitals received a B, 14 hospitals received a C and 3 hospitals received a D grade. Zero hospitals received an F.

Here is the entire Fall 2022 New Jersey list: NJ Safest Hospitals: Latest Ratings Released For Fall