Riddle Hospital's Safety Ranked In New Nonprofit Study

MEDIA, PA – The bi-annual hospital safety grade rankings from nonprofit watchdog group Leapfrog has been released and some hospitals improved, others worsened.

So what was Riddle Hospital's ranking this spring? First let's lay out how Leapfrog determines its safety grades.

Leapfrog says 27 evidence-based measures of patient safety are used to calculate the grades. Applying that information, a numerical score is then created and converted into one of five letter grades.

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. Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades.

In spring 2018, Riddle Hospital earned a C grade.

The C grade is a slip for Riddle Hospital, as it earned B grades in fall and spring 2017. In fall 2016 Leapfrog gave it a C and in spring 2016 it earned a B.

Fall and spring 2015 saw A grades for Riddle.

Overall, no Pennsylvania facilities earned a F grade. Five earned a D and 42 earned a C.

Thirty-four PA facilities to earn a B and 37 earned A grades in Pennsylvania.

See the full ranking list here.

"Issued twice per year, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade empowers regular people to find a safer hospital in their community by using the easy-to-understand A, B, C, D, F grading system," Leapfrog explains. You can read more about the letter grades here.

Nationwide, 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.

With reporting by Kara Seymour

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