Pittsburgh-Area Hospital Safety Grades: Fall 2019

PITTSBURGH, PA - Thirteen southwestern Pennsylvania hospitals received an "A" grade for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections in a nationwide hospital safety analysis. But one received a "D" grade, meaning patients are much more likely to die a preventable death at those facilities than those graded higher.

The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization committed to improving the quality and safety of American health care, assesses roughly 2,500 hospitals nationwide. Of those, 33 percent earned an "A," 25 percent earned a "B," 34 percent a "C," 8 percent a "D" and just under 1 percent an "F."

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. You can read more about the letter grades here.

The release of updated Safety Grades this fall coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the Institute of Medicine’s groundbreaking report, "To Err is Human, " which revealed nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year due to preventable medical errors. Subsequent research suggests the number may be twice as high.

“In stark contrast to 20 years ago, we’re now able to pinpoint where the problems are, and that allows us to grade hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a statement. “It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process.”

Here's how Pittsburgh-area hospitals fared in the findings:

A grades:

• UPMC McKeesport
• UPMC Presbyterian
• UPMC Shadyside
• UPMC Mercy
• UPMC St. Margaret
• St. Clair Hospital
• UPMC Passavant - McCandless
• Heritage Valley Sewickley
• Washington Hospital
• UPMC Passavant - Cranberry
• Latrobe Hospital
• Heritage Valley Beaver
• Butler Memorial

B grades:

• Jefferson Regional Medical Center
• UPMC Shadyside
• West Penn
• UPMC East
• Forbes Regional
• Monongahela Valley Hospital
• Canonsburg General Hospital
• Westmoreland Hospital

C grades:

• Allegheny General Hospital
• Allegheny Valley Hospital
• Uniontown Hospital
• Armstrong County Memorial Hospital

D grade:

• Ohio Valley General Hospital, one of eight hospitals in the state to receive a "D" grade.

A call to Ohio Valley General requesting comment on its grade was not immediately returned.