News: Majority of avoidable deaths occur in hospitals with grades of “C” or below, Leapfrog says

According to a new report from the Leapfrog Group, patients treated at hospitals that earned a “D” or “F” grade when it comes to patient safety face a 92% higher risk of death from avoidable medical errors than at hospitals with an “A” grade, FierceHealthcare reported. Patients at hospitals with a “C” grade were 88% more likely to die from an avoidable error compared with patients treated at hospitals that received an “A.”

About 32% of the 2,600 hospitals evaluated in the report received an “A” grade for safety, 26% earned a “B” grade, and 36% earned a “C” grade. Hospitals with “D” or “F” grades made up about 7% of the hospitals examined.

Official estimated that 160,000 patients died from avoidable medical efforts in 2018, which is an improvement from 205,000 avoidable deaths in 2016. The reduction is the result of two main factors, HealthLeaders Media reported:

• Hospitals have made some improvement on the performance measures included in Leapfrog’s safety grades
• Some of the measures have been redefined and “re-baselined” in the past three years

“The good news is that tens of thousands of lives have been saved because of progress on patient safety. The bad news is that there’s still a lot of needless death and harm in American hospitals,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group in the accompanying press release. “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.”

While some industry groups and hospitals have criticized Leapfrog’s grading and methodology as overly simplistic and possibly misleading, Binder told FierceHealthcare that the data are “as good as you’re going to get on patient safety.” The information, Binder said, is tied to actual death rates and actual verified events. Plus, the grades are based on performance measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, CMS, and secondary data sources.

“Hospitals that get an ‘A’ put a priority on patient safety. It sounds simple. But it’s very difficult,” Binder said. “There are a lot of competing priorities in hospitals and unless everyone from the top leader to the support staff recognizes patient safety as the number one priority, there will not be change. It’s not something you can treat as a middling priority. It’s a relentless pursuit of what’s best for the patient.”

Editor’s note: To read FierceHealthcare’s coverage of this story, click here. To read HealthLeaders Media’s coverage of this story, click here. To read the press release and accompanying report from the Leapfrog Group, click here. To read about previous complaints about Leapfrog Group’s methodology, click here. To read about Leapfrog Group’s list of the top hospitals in 2018, click here.