LOUISVILLE, KY, May 1, 2024 – The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit representing hundreds of the nation’s most influential employers and purchasers of healthcare, today announced the spring 2024 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades. The grades reflect preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections that together kill more than 500 people a day in the United States.
In addition to issuing grades to almost 3,000 individual general hospitals, The Leapfrog Group ranks states based on percentage of “A” hospitals, and Kentucky ranked 35th nationally. For the first time, Leapfrog has ranked metro areas in addition to states based on percentage of “A” hospitals. Two out of seven hospitals ranked in the Lexington-Fayette, KY region were “A” hospitals. One out of twelve hospitals in the Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN region were “A” hospitals. Five out of eighteen hospitals in the Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN region were “A” hospitals.
“The Hospital Safety Grade allows patients to know the safest hospitals in their area,” said Jenny Goins, President and CEO of the Kentuckiana Health Collaborative. “When hospitals are dedicated to transparent reporting and patient safety, they are quite literally saving lives. As a Leapfrog Regional Leader, the Kentuckiana Health Collaborative stands with Leapfrog and our participating hospitals for the work they are doing to protect patients from preventable harms.”
In Kentucky, 60 hospitals were graded, and ten earned an “A,” 18 earned a “B,” 27 earned a “C,” five earned a “D,” and none earned an “F.” The ten hospitals that earned an “A” were:
- St. Elizabeth Healthcare – Edgewood
- Deaconess Henderson Hospital
- Georgetown Community Hospital
- Tristar Greenview Regional Hospital
- Medical Center at Bowling Green
- Meadowview Regional Medical Center
- Baptist Health La Grange
- Baptist Health Lexington
- T.J. Samson Community Hospital
- Saint Joseph – London
“Hospitals even in the same city can differ greatly in patient safety. A patient’s choice of hospital could be a life-or-death decision, and the Hospital Safety Grade arms patients with data to help them make more informed decisions on where they seek care,” said President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group Leah Binder. “We are grateful to the hospitals in Kentucky for their excellent work and determination to keep patients safe and prevent unnecessary pain and suffering.”
The latest Hospital Safety Grades also show that healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) continue to decline since fall 2022, when HAIs were at a five-year high, while patient experience has shown significant improvement since the last Safety Grade cycle in fall 2023.
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About the Kentuckiana Health Collaborative
The Kentuckiana Health Collaborative (KHC) is a non-profit coalition of businesses and healthcare stakeholders working to solve the complex health problems that face our local community with the goal of improving the health status and healthcare delivery in Greater Louisville and Kentucky. The mission of the KHC is to work collaboratively with healthcare purchasers and stakeholders to build healthier communities through high quality, affordable, and equitable healthcare across Kentucky and Southern Indiana. The collaborative is particularly useful in solving problems where multiple sectors can accomplish more together than alone. The KHC works to accomplish its mission through a variety of healthcare measurement and community health initiatives that leverage employer engagement, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and education to transform and optimize healthcare.
About Leapfrog
Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps for patient safety. Among its initiatives, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade was launched in 2012 and assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections. It is the only hospital ratings program based exclusively on hospital prevention of medical errors and harm to patients. It is fully transparent and free to the public, and grades are updated biannually in the fall and in the spring. To look up your hospital’s Safety Grade, please visit HospitalSafetyGrade.org. For more from Leapfrog, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and sign up for our newsletter.
