Pittsburgh-Area Hospital Safety Grades Released

PITTSBURGH, PA - Six southwestern Pennsylvania hospitals received an “A” grade for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections in a nationwide hospital safety analysis released Tuesday. No southwestern Pennsylvania received lower than a “C” grade.

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, 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. Here’s how southwestern Pennsylvania hospitals were rated:

A grade

• Latrobe, Latrobe

• Monongahela Valley, Monongahela

• St. Clair, Bethel Park

• UPMC East, Monroeville

• UPMC McKeesport, McKeesport

• UPMC Passavant, Cranberry

B grade

• Butler Memorial, Butler

• UPMC Mercy, Uptown

• UPMC Passavant, McCandless

• UPMC Presbyterian, Oakland

• Washington, Washington

C grade

• Allegheny General, North Side

• Allegheny Valley, Harrison

• Forbes, Monroeville

• Heritage Valley, Sewickley

• Ohio Valley, McKees Rocks

• UPMC Shadyside, Shadyside

• UPMC St. Margaret, near Aspinwall

• West Penn, Lawrenceville

• Westmoreland, Greensburg

Leapfrog says you shouldn’t refuse emergency care because of a bad safety grade. They’re meant to be used as a guide for planned events and a research tool for potential emergencies.

Patch reporters Dan Hampton and Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this report.

File photo of Allegheny General Hospital via Shutterstock.