The Spring 2024 Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Ratings

The Leapfrog Group is a respected national nonprofit which collects, analyzes, and publishes data on health care safety and quality. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Biannual Safety Survey reports hospital performance data which give health care consumers the information needed to make informed decisions. Recent Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades compilations assign letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety to help health care consumers avoid poorly managed institutions.

This Spring's Leapfrog rating in Michigan were about a wash overall, but there were some interesting grade changes within our State.  Here is the Leapfrog link, and an MLive story:

https://www.hospitalsafetygrade.org/search?findBy=state&zip_code=&city=&state_prov=MI&hospital=

https://www.mlive.com/news/2024/05/safety-grades-declined-for-16-michigan-hospitals-how-did-yours-score.html

Safety grades declined for 16 Michigan hospitals. How did yours score?
By Justin P. Hicks and Scott Levin - May 01, 2024

Michigan’s spring 2024 hospital safety report card is here, with fewer “A” and “B” grades than the fall but also fewer failing grades.

Of the 81 hospitals evaluated by the national non-profit watchdog The Leapfrog Group, 25 received top marks with an “A” and 23 came close with a “B.”

Five hospitals were given a “D,” including four in Metro Detroit and one in Bay City.

Leapfrog grades hospitals twice annually — in the spring and fall — based on how well health systems protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The latest assessments were published Wednesday, May 1.

Since 2012, Leapfrog has evaluated hospitals on data the institutions report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Hospitals are also evaluated against national averages for criteria like leadership, staff communication and efficient quantity of qualified nurses.

Patients are twice as likely to die of a preventable problem at a “C,” “D,” or “F” hospital compared to an “A” hospital, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers.

Leapfrog said preventable hospital mistakes account for upwards of 150,000 deaths per year. If all hospitals performed the way “A” hospital do, they said more than 50,000 lives would be saved annually.

This spring, 52 hospitals maintained their score from the fall assessment period, while 16 got worse and 12 improved. Aside from McLaren Flint jumping from an “F” to a “C,” no hospital improved or declined by more than one letter grade.

Here’s a summary of how Michigan’s hospitals fared:

25 hospitals got an “A,” up from 24 in the fall.
23 hospitals got a “B,” down from 27 in the fall.
28 hospitals got a “C,” up from 27 in the fall.
Five hospitals got a “D,” up from three in the fall.
No hospital got an “F,” down from one in the fall.

Leapfrog’s goal is to help patients make informed decisions about which hospital to visit for their care needs, and to push hospitals to higher levels of safety and care.

“When they have a choice, the Hospital Safety Grade is the first tool patients should use to select a hospital, because safety should come first,” wrote Leapfrog in its frequently asked questions report.

As a state, Michigan’s 31% of hospitals earning “A” grades ranked 20th in the nation. Of all evaluated hospitals in the U.S., 29% received an “A,” 26% a “B,” 37% a “C,” 7% a “D,” and less than 1% an “F.”

Below is a searchable database of hospitals that were evaluated by The Leapfrog Group for the fall 2023 period. Type in a hospitals name to see its safety grades for the last eight periods going back to spring 2020. Click on a column header to arrange the hospitals from highest/lowest scores in a given period.

Note: not included in the assessment are military or Veteran’s Affairs hospitals, critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, children’s hospitals, or outpatient surgery centers.

The same data from the database above is available on the map below. Hover over a dot to see which hospital it represents and what its latest grade was. Click on the dot to see previous scores.

Three of Michigan’s five “D” hospitals belonged to McLaren Health Care. The system got a “D” for its Bay Region hospital in Bay City, Macomb hospital in Mount Clemens, and Oakland hospital in Pontiac. Five of its hospitals got “C” grades, including an improvement from an “F” by Flint since the fall, while only Port Huron received a “B” grade.

Michigan’s remaining “D” grade hospitals were Detroit Medical Center’s Receiving and Sinai-Grace hospitals in Detroit.

In Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Health - Michigan Medicine got its first “B” after 23 consecutive “A” grades since Leapfrog began handing out assessments in 2012.

Three hospitals have had at least nine consecutive “A’s,” including this spring. They were Corewell Health Greenville Hospital, Corewell Health Zeeland Hospital, and Lake Huron Medical Center in Port Huron.

The Grand Rapids-Kentwood metro area had a 50% “A” grade, which tied for 19th in the nation among areas with 500,000 people and at least six hospitals. No other Michigan metro area made the top 25.

Nationally, patient satisfaction improved for the spring 2024 assessment after four consecutive periods of deteriorating reviews given via patient survey.

“Since the start of the pandemic, patient experience has steadily declined,” Leapfrog noted in its report. “The spring 2024 Hospital Safety Grade has shown the first sign of improvement, with all measures significantly improving since fall 2023, but the measures are still far from pre-pandemic levels.”

Healthcare-associated infections have declined dramatically since a spike in fall 2022. Those include central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and staph bacterial infections known as MRSA -- all of which declined by at least 30%.

For more detailed assessments of your local hospital, visit hospitalsafetygrade.org, select Michigan and pick a hospital.

Some very useful graphics in the MLive story, at the hyperlink, above.