Safest Hospitals In North Carolina: The Best And The Worst

In North Carolina, 34 out of 78 hospitals received an A in hospital safety, according to new grades released by The Leapfrog Group this week. While no hospitals received an F grade, one earned a D grade.

The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The grades released on Tuesday showed that five states — Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho — showed significant improvement since the safety grades were first implemented in 2012.

"Errors and infections in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America, and people deserve to know which of their hospitals are best at preventing them," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a press release.

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

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. The group 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, and see the full list of North Carolina hospital grades.)

Here are the North Carolina hospitals that received "A" grades, according to Leapfrog:

• Carteret Health Care, Morehead City
• Vidant Beaufort Hospital, Washington
• Onslow Memorial Hospital, Jacksonville
• Vidant Duplin Hospital, Kenansville
• Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center, Bolivia
• Johnston Health, Smithfield
• Duke Raleigh Hospital, Raleigh
• Granville Medical Center, Oxford
• Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh
• WakeMed Cary Hospital, Cary
• Duke University Hospital, Durham
• University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill
• FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, Pinehurst
• Alamance Regional Medical Center, Burlington
• FirstHealth Richmond Memorial Hospital, Rockingham
• Annie Penn Hospital, Reidsville
• Randolph Health, Asheboro
• Wesley Long Community, Greensboro
• High Point Regional UNC Health Care, High Point
• Carolinas Healthcare System Stanly, Albemarle
• Novant Health Medical Park Hospital, Winston-Salem
• Carolinas Healthcare System - NorthEast, Concord
• Northern Hospital of Surry County, Mount Airy
• Carolinas Healthcare System - Pineville, Charlotte
• Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, Elkin
• CaroMont Regional Medical Center, Gastonia
• Carolinas Healthcare System - Lincoln, Lincolnton
• Catawba Valley Medical Center, Hickory
• Carolinas Healthcare System - Kings Mountain, Kings Mountain
• Frye Regional Medical Center, Hickory
• Carolinas Healthcare System - Cleveland, Shelby
• Watauga Medical Center, Boone
• The McDowell Hospital, Inc., Marion
• Park Ridge Health, Hendersonville

The North Carolina hospital that earned a "D" grades from Leapfrog:

• Sentara Albemarle Medical Center, Elizabeth City

Leapfrog notes that of the 2,632 hospitals graded in Tuesday's update, 832 earned an "A," 662 a "B," 964 a "C," 159 a "D" and 15 an "F."

Patch Editor Deb Belt contributed to this article.

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