Only 11% of NY hospitals – 1 WNY facility – get top safety grade from Leapfrog

The latest hospital safety grades from the Leapfrog Group are out.

And it’s getting harder to find a top-rated hospital in New York State, including in Western New York.

In the fall safety grades, released Monday, only 16 of 147 New York State hospitals landed the top grade of an “A.” With just 10.9% of its hospitals getting the top grade, New York came in at No. 42 in the ranking of states with the highest percentage of “A” hospitals. In the spring, just 11.3% of New York’s hospitals had “A” grades, which tied for 40th. 

Utah ranked No. 1 this fall, with about 52% of its hospitals getting an “A.” Meanwhile, Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and North Dakota had none of its hospitals receive an “A.”

Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit and health care safety watchdog, assigns a letter grade – A through F – to nearly 3,000 U.S. general hospitals, ratings that are widely cited and closely watched because they evaluate a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents and infections. The safety grades come out twice a year, in the fall and in the spring.

Leapfrog said this fall’s grades are the first to reflect hospital performance post-pandemic. Generally, the organization said, hospitals reduced health care-acquired infections post-pandemic, after seeing significant increases during the pandemic.

“We are encouraged by the improvement in infections and applaud hospitals for reversing the disturbing infection spike we saw during the pandemic,” Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder said in a statement. “However, there’s still more work to be done. It’s deeply concerning that patient reports about their health care experience continues to decline.”

Fourteen hospitals across Western New York’s eight counties had safety grades.

Bradford Regional Medical Center in Bradford, Pa., which is part of Kaleida Health’s Upper Allegheny Health…