Westwood Hospital Gets An 'C' Grade For Safety

WESTWOOD, NJ — A borough hospital has received a "C" for safety from a national nonprofit.

Hackensack University Medical Center at Pascack Valley was one of 18 New Jersey hospitals to get a "C" for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections, which collectively are the third leading cause of death in America.

The Leapfrog Group released it's bi-yearly hospital safety grades on Tuesday, finding that hospitals overall have improved in reducing the number of avoidable deaths. The group assessed roughly 2,500 hospitals. Of those, 30 percent earned an "A," 28 percent earned a "B," 35 percent a "C," 6 percent a "D" and 1 percent an "F."

"The national numbers on death and harm in hospitals have alarmed us for decades. What we see in the new round of Safety Grades are signs of many hospitals making significant improvements in their patient safety record," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a release.

The assessment system assigns school-style letter grades to general acute-care hospitals. The hope is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

University Hospital in Newark got an "F." The hospital was reported to have a variety of problems related to infections, surgery and doctors, nurses and hospital staff, according to Leapfrog.

Among the findings nationally, five hospitals that received an "A" grade for the first time this year previously received an "F" grade, the group said, and 46 hospitals earned an "A" for the first time since the grading system began six years ago.

Related: Ridgewood Hospital Gets An 'A' Grade For Safety
Related: Teaneck Hospital Gets An 'A' Grade For Safety

Additional reporting by Tom Davis

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