Health & Fitness

Virginia Hospital Patient Safety Grades Released For 2017

How safe is your hospital? Leapfrog Group has announced its spring 2017 ratings, grading Virginia hospitals from A to F for patient safety.

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How safe are Virginia's hospitals? New grades released Wednesday by The Leapfrog Group will tell you just that. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by employers and healthcare providers, ranked 70 Virginia hospitals as part of its spring 2017 safety grades.

The hospitals were given a letter grade from A through F based on several factors. Of the 70 Virginia hospitals that were graded, nearly half, 35 received an A. None received an F, and only one was graded a D. To come up with the grades, Leapfrog looks at medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The goal is to determine what a patient's risk of further injury or infection is if they visit a certain hospital. (SIGN UP: Subscribe to a Virginia Patch News Alert and Newsletter. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

According to the organization, more than 1,000 Americans die each day from preventable hospital errors. Hospitals given a B rating by Leapfrog had a 9 percent higher risk of avoidable death than A hospitals. That number jumps to 35 percent in C hospitals and 50 percent higher in D and F hospitals.

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At the state level, Maine was ranked No. 1. Hawaii, Oregon, Wisconsin and Idaho rounded out the top five. Since Leapfrog began its ratings in 2012, the organization says there have been significant strides in improving patient safety, such as a 21 percent decrease in hospital acquired conditions, along with increased use of computerized physician order entry systems, and millions of averted patient harms. More than 1,000 people a day are estimated to die from preventable errors, making this the third leading cause of death in America.

“When we launched the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade in 2012, our goal was to alert consumers to the hazards involved in a hospital stay and help them choose the safest option. We also hoped to galvanize hospitals to make safety the first priority day in and day out,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog.

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Here are the grades the Virginia hospitals received. (Visit the full list to learn more about individual rankings.)

A

B

C

D

»Image via Shutterstock

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