Ohio Hospital Safety Grades: 46 Hospitals Get ‘A’ Grade

More than 40 Ohio hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new Spring 2019 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group on Wednesday. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade, findings that were unchanged from the group’s last round of rankings released in Fall 2018.

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.

Here are the grades Ohio hospitals that were given 'A' grades by the Leapfrog Group:

• University Hospitals St. John Medical Center, Westlake
• University Hospitals Parma Medical Center
• The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus
• The Ohio State University Hospital East, Columbus
• The Christ Hospital, Cincinnati
• St. Rita's Medical Center, Lima
• Southern Ohio Medical Center, Portsmouth
• ProMedica Memorial Hospital, Fremont
• ProMedica Bay Park Hospital, Oregon
• OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, Columbus
• OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, Mansfield
• OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, Columbus
• OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware
• OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin
• OhioHealth Doctors Hospital, Columbus
• OhioHealth — O'Bleness Hospital, Athens
• OhioHealth — Marion General Hospital, Marion
• Mount Carmel St. Ann's Hospital, Westerville
• Mercy Hospital — Defiance Hospital, Defiance
• Mercy Health - St. Anne Hospital, Toledo
• Mercy Health - Lorain Hospital, Lorain
• Mercer County Community Hospital - Coldwater, Coldwater
• Memorial Hospital, Marysville
• McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital, Oxford
• Mary Rutan Hospital, Bellefontaine
• Licking Memorial Hospital, Newark
• Kettering Health Network — Sycamore Medical Center, Miamisburg
• Kettering Health Network — Southview Medical Center, Centerville
• Kettering Health Network — Soin Medical Center, Beavercreek
• Kettering Health Network — Kettering Medical Center, Kettering
• Kettering Health Network — Greene Memorial Hospital, Xenia
• Kettering Health Network — Grandview Medical Center, Dayton
• Kettering Health Network — Fort Hamilton Hospital, Hamilton
• Good Samaritan Hospital of Cincinnati
• Genesis Hospital, Zanesville
• East Liverpool City Hospital
• Cleveland Clinic Health System - Marymount Hospital, Garfield Heights
• Cleveland Clinic Health System - Luteran Hospital, Cleveland
• Cleveland Clinic Health System - Hillcrest Hospital, Mayfield Heights
• Cleveland Clinic Health System - Euclid Hospital, Euclid
• Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland
• Cleveland Clinic Akron General Medical Center, Akron
• Bethesda North Hospital, Cincinnati
• Bethesda Butler Hospital, Hamilton
• Berger Health System, Cincinnati
• Ashtabula County Medical Center, Ashtabula

Oregon, Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts and Utah had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Four states — Wyoming, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota — and the District of Columbia did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

For this round of rankings, the Leapfrog Group’s research found that patients at hospitals that receive “D” or “F” grades face a 92 percent greater risk of avoidable death compared to “A” hospitals. At “C” and “B” hospitals, patients on average face an 88 percent and a 35 percent greater risk respectively.

There were no Ohio hospitals that receive an "F" grade, but there were four "D" grades. Here are the hospitals that got a "D" in Ohio:

• Van Wert County Hospital, Van Wert
• University of Toledo Medical Center, Toledo
• University Hospitals Portage Medical Center, Ravenna
• Trinity Medical Center West, Steubenville

The group estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at “A” hospitals, 50,000 lives would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

“The good news is that tens of thousands of lives have been saved because of progress on patient safety. The bad news is that there’s still a lot of needless death and harm in American hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “Hospitals don’t all have the same track record, so it really matters which hospital people choose, which is the purpose of our Hospital Safety Grade.”

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 28 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.)