Pittsburgh-Area Hospital Safety Grades: Spring 2019

PITTSBURGH, PA - Eight southwestern Pennsylvania hospitals received an "A" grade for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections in a nationwide hospital safety analysis. But two 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, 32 percent earned an "A," 26 percent earned a "B," 36 percent a "C," 6 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.

Statistics are sobering for hospitals receiving the “D” of “F” grade. Patients at those hospitals face a 92 percent greater risk of avoidable death than patients at other medical facilities.

“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 statement. “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.”

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

A grades:

• UPMC Presbyterian

• UPMC McKeesport

• UPMC St. Margaret

• UPMC Passavant - McCandless

• UPMC Passavant - Cranberry

• St. Clair

• Heritage Valley

• Latrobe

B grades:

• UPMC Shadyside

• UPMC Mercy

• UPMC East

• Monongahela Valley

• Canonsburg

• Westmoreland

• Washington

• Heritage Valley

• Uniontown

C grades

• Jefferson Regional

• West Penn

• Forbes Regional

• Ohio Valley

• Butler Memorial

• Armstrong County Memorial

D grades

• Allegheny General

• Allegheny Valley