PA Hospital Safety Grades: How The State's Best, Worst Stack Up

PENNSYLVANIA — Several Pennsylvania hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries, and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

The latest ratings reflect care during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw years of progress in patient safety reversed, according to research from The Leapfrog Group.

The pandemic has had a negative effect on “health care delivery at every level and setting, from staffing shortages to increased infections to the very care patients receive,” according to the Adult Patient Experience at Acute Care Hospitals survey, also released by The Leapfrog Group.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

In Pennsylvania, 39 hospitals received an A, 30 hospitals received a B, and 14 hospitals received a C. The Keystone State had no hospitals with the very low D and F grades. During Leapfrog's last ratings in the spring, the state had 8 hospitals in the D category.

Here are the ratings, according to Leapfrog:

A

• St. Luke's Hospital - Allentown Campus
• Temple University Hospital - Main Campus
• St. Luke's Upper Bucks Hospital
• Geisinger Lewistown Hospital
• St. Luke's University Hospital - Bethlehem Campus
• Allegheny General Hospital
• UPMC Hamot
• WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital
• Lower Bucks Hospital
• Holy Redeemer Hospital and Medical Center
• Penn Presbyterian Medical Center
• WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital
• Pennsylvania Hospital
• Jefferson Abington Hospital
• AHN Grove City
• St. Luke's Hospital - Anderson Campus
• UPMC East, Monroeville
• St. Luke's Monroe Campus
• Geisinger St. Luke's Hospital, Orwigsburg
• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania – Cedar Avenue
• UPMC Horizon - Shenango Valley Campus
• Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, East Norriton
• UPMC Passavant - Cranberry
• UPMC St. Margaret, Pittsburgh
• UPMC Passavant, Pittsburgh
• Main Line Health-Riddle Hospital, Media
• Doylestown Hospital
• Chester County Hospital, West Chester
• Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono, East Stroudsburg
• St. Luke's Sacred Heart Campus, Allentown
• Wellspan Waynesboro Hospital
• UPMC Shadyside, Pittsburgh
• Main Line Health-Bryn Mawr Hospital
• Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital, Greensburg
• WellSpan Chambersburg Hospital, Chambersburg
• Main Line Health-Paoli Hospital, Paoli
• Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, Darby
• St. Luke's Easton Hospital, Easton

B

• Geisinger Community Medical Center, Scranton
• Jefferson Frankford, Philadelphia
• Jefferson Bucks, Langhorne
• Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia
• Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest, Allentown
• Jefferson Torresdale, Philadlephia
• Suburban Community Hospital, East Norriton
• Moses Taylor Hospital, Scranton
• WellSpan York Hospital
• Geisinger Medical Center, Danville
• St. Clair Hospital, Pittsburgh
• Regional Hospital of Scranton
• Roxborough Memorial Hospital, Philadelphia
• St. Mary Medical Center
• Lehigh Valley Hospital - Muhlenberg
• UPMC Hanover
• Jefferson Lansdale Hospital
• Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center
• Reading Hospital
• UPMC Harrisburg
• Latrobe Hospital
• UPMC Lititz
• UPMC Community
• Lancaster General Hospital
• Thomas Jefferson University Hospital - Methodist Hospital Campus, Philadelphia
• Lehigh Valley Hospital - Hazleton
• UPMC Memorial
• Temple University Hospital Jeanes Campus
• Indiana Regional Medical Center, Indiana
• Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia

C

• Chestnut Hill Hospital
• Delaware County Memorial Hospital
• Taylor Hospital, Ridley Park
• Main Line Health-Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood
• Crozer Chester Medical Center, Upland
• Grand View Health
• Springfield Hospital
• Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center
• Pottstown Hospital
• Phoenixville Hospital
• Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
• Nazareth Hospital, Philadelphia
• Excela Health Frick Hospital, Mount Pleasant

No grade

• Washington Health System Greene, Waynesburg

With the release of its fall report, The Leapfrog Group has analyzed hospital safety data for a decade. Most hospitals have improved over time under more public scrutiny, Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“For a long time, the health care community tried to improve safety, but progress stalled,” Binder said. “The big difference over this decade is that for the first time, we publicly reported each hospital’s record on patient safety, and that galvanized the kind of change we all hoped for.

“It’s not enough change, but we are on the right track,” she said.

Notably, hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

Also, according to the report, progress on the number of patients treated for health care-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly two dozen hospitals have received straight-A reports every year since the Leapfrog Group began its safety grades in 2012. They are:

• Arizona: Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix.
• California: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo.
• Colorado: Rose Medical Center, Denver.
• Florida: AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach.
• Illinois: Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst; Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield; University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago.
• Massachusetts: Beverly Hospital, Beverly; Saint Anne's Hospital, Fall River.
• Michigan: University of Michigan Health, Ann Arbor.
• Mississippi: Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle, Columbus.
• North Carolina: Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh.
• Ohio: OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin;OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware.
• Texas: St. David's Medical Center, Austin.
• Virginia: Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg; Sentara CarePlex Hospital, Hampton; Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg.
• Washington: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle.

Search for your hospital’s fall 2022 safety grade and read more about the methodology.