75 FL Hospitals Get 'A' Rating On New Safety Grades: See Full List

FLORIDA — Seventy-five hospitals in Florida were given top safety grades in The Leapfrog Group’s spring 2024 Hospital Safety Grades released Wednesday.

The independent, nonprofit watchdog group assigned safety grades, ranging from “A” to “F,” for 3,000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections.

In Florida, hospitals receiving the top letter grade were:

• Orlando Health - Orlando Regional Medical Center, Orlando
• AdventHealth Orlando, Orlando
• AdventHealth New Smyrna Beach, New Smyrna Beach
• AdventHealth East Orlando, Orlando
• AdventHealth Sacred Heart, Pensacola
• Parrish Medical Center, Titusville
• Orlando Health - Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, Orlando
• Orlando Health - Health Central Hospital, Ocoee
• AdventHealth Altamonte Springs, Altamonte Springs
• AdventHealth DeLand, DeLand
• AdventHealth Zephyrhills, Zephyrhills
• AdventHealth Apopka, Apopka
• Orlando Health - South Lake Hospital, Clermont
• Winter Haven Hospital, Winter Haven
• AdventHealth Celebration, Celebration
• AdventHealth Fish Memorial, Orange City
• St. Joseph’s Hospital - North, Lutz
• AdventHealth Kissimmee, Kissimmee
• Broward Health North, Deerfield Beach
• Baptist Medical Center South, Jacksonville
• Rockledge Regional Medical Center, Rockledge
• Bartow Regional Medical Center, Bartow
• Baptist Health Homestead Hospital, Homestead
• Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville
• Baptist Health South Miami Hospital, South Miami
• HCA Florida Lake City Hospital, Lake City
• AdventHealth Winter Park, Winter Park
• HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital, Sarasota
• HCA Florida Memorial Hospital, Jacksonville
• Larkin Community Hospital, South Miami
• HCA Florida Trinity Hospital, Trinity
• HCA Florida North Florida Hospital, Gainesville
• HCA Florida Kendall Hospital, Miami
• 96th Medical Group, Eglin Air Force Base
• HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin Hospital, Fort Walton Beach
• HCA Florida Westside Hospital, Plantation
• HCA Florida West Hospital, Pensacola
• HCA Florida Brandon Hospital, Brandon
• HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital, Fort Pierce
• Jupiter Medical Center, Jupiter
• HCA Florida St. Lucie Hospital, Port St. Lucie
• Orlando Health South Seminole Hospital, Longwood
• HCA Florida Oak Hill Hospital, Brooksville
• HCA Florida Englewood Hospital, Englewood
• Memorial Hospital Miramar, Miramar
• Baptist Health Doctors Hospital, Coral Gables
• Baptist Health West Kendall Baptist Hospital, Miami
• AdventHealth Wesley Chapel, Wesley Chapel
• St. Vincent's Medical Center Clay County, Middleburg
• Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Venice
• Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Jacksonville
• AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach
• Healthpark Medical Center, Fort Myers
• Oviedo Medical Center, Oviedo
• St. Joseph’s Hospital - South, Riverview
• Cape Coral Hospital, Cape Coral
• UF Health Shands Hospital, Gainesville
• Lehigh Regional Medical Center, Lehigh Acres
• St. Anthony's Hospital, St. Petersburg
• Mease Dunedin Hospital, Dunedin
• AdventHealth Carrollwood, Tampa
• HCA Florida South Tampa Hospital, Tampa
• Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater
• Sacred Heart Hospital On The Emerald Coast, Miramar Beach
• Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, New Port Richey
• Mease Countryside Hospital, Safety Harbor
• Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville, Jacksonville
• Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota
• AdventHealth Ocala, Ocala
• Gulf Breeze Hospital, Gulf Breeze
• AdventHealth Dade City, Dade City
• Lee Memorial Hospital, Fort Myers
• Baptist Medical Center Nassau, Fernandina Beach
• St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa
• Baptist Medical Center Beaches, Jacksonville Beach

Overall, Florida had:

• 41 hospitals that earned “B” grades;
• 61 hospitals that earned “C” grades;
• 12 hospitals that earned “D” grades; and
• 1 hospital that earned “F” grades.

The Leapfrog Group, which grades hospitals twice a year, also ranked the 10 states with the highest number of “A” hospitals. Utah tops the list, followed by Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Alaska, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine, respectively.

For the first time this spring, the watchdog ranked the top 25 metropolitan statistical reporting areas according to the number of “A” hospitals. The top three metro areas are Allentown, Pennsylvania; Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Multiple Florida metro areas ranked among the top 25 in the country, including:

• No. 8 - Orlando-Kissimmee
• No. 13 - Jacksonville (tied)
• No. 13 - North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton (tied)
• No. 16 - Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater
• No. 19 - Deltona-Daytona-Ormond Beach

Nationwide, hospitals showed improvements over their fall 2023 performance in both reducing hospital-acquired infections and improving patient experiences, the report said.

Hospital-acquired infections and preventable errors kill about 250,000 people a year in the United States, making patient safety problems the nation’s third-leading cause of death, according to a summary of peer-reviewed research published in the global health care journal BMJ.

Hospital-acquired infections soared to levels not seen since 2016 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that spike, 92 percent of hospitals showed improved performance on at least one of three dangerous infections, the report said.

Central line-associated bloodstream infections were down by 34 percent, and both catheter-associated urinary tract infections and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections decreased by 30 percent.

Despite the improvements, “patient safety remains a crisis-level hazard in health care,” Leapfrog Group president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“Some hospitals are much better than others at protecting patients from harm, and that’s why we make the Hospital Safety Grade available to the public and why we encourage all hospitals to focus more attention on safety,” Binder said.

Patient experiences have worsened since the pandemic, and while the spring report shows improvement, patients don’t report the same level of confidence they had before the pandemic, according to the report.

Patient experience is measured through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to publicly report how hospital patients measure the care they received.

The five measures are nurse communication, doctor communication, hospital staff responsiveness, communication about medicines and discharge information.

“Patient experience is very difficult to influence without delivering better care, so these findings are encouraging,” Binder said. “We were also pleased to see the decrease in preventable infections, which cause terrible suffering and sometimes death. When we look at these positive trends, we see lives saved — and that is gratifying.”