Illinois Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And The Worst

ILLINOIS — Several Illinois hospitals received top safety marks, while others didn’t quite measure up in The Leapfrog Group’s annual spring safety grades released Thursday.

The nonprofit health care watchdog group grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from “A” to “F” based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

More than 2,700 general, acute-care U.S. hospitals were assessed for Leapfrog’s Spring Safety Grades. Among those hospitals, 27 have achieved 19 consecutive “A” grades in every biannual grading cycle since Leapfrog launched the safety grades in spring 2012.

In Illinois:

• 39 hospitals received an A grade, down from 46 last year.
• 23 hospitals received a B grade, up from 22 last year.
• 44 hospitals received a C grade, up from 31 last year.
• 5 hospitals received a D grade, down from 6 last year.
• 1 hospital received an F grade, same as last year.

Among the top-ranked hospitals in Illinois, Elmhurst Memorial Hospital received an 'A' rating, a tradition that dates back to 2012. The hospital's president and CEO, Pamela Dunley and Sherry Leahy, associate vice president of Clinical Excellence and Patient Safety, said in a video recorded for the honor that a survey conducted among patients 10 years ago helped the facility establish a high standard of excellence.

"That gave us a whole set of tools that all staff could use to make sure that all patients receive the highest quality of care and patient safety," Leahy said in the video.

Dunley said that the hospital's commitment to patient safety became critical over the past year when it dealt with the coronavirus pandemic. She said Elmhurst quickly found itself in a hotspot for positive COVID-19 cases, which made it even more important for the hospital to take action.

St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago was the lone medical facility in the state to receive a failing grade. In 2020, Illinois also had a single hospital earn an "F" grade, but it was a different Chicago facility, John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital. In 2019, there were no "F" grades on Illinois' list.

Find the full list of 2021 Illinois hospital grades here.

It’s worth noting the hospitals were graded during a time of extraordinary pressure on the health care system due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“This pandemic emphasized how much we rely on America’s health care workforce,” Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “Our straight ‘A’ hospitals remind us how preparedness protected their patients as well as their workforce and created a high level of organizational resilience.”

Across all states, highlights of findings from the spring 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an "A," 24 percent received a "B," 35 percent received a "C," 7 percent received a "D," and less than 1 percent received an "F."
• Five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals are Massachusetts, Idaho, Maine, Virginia, and North Carolina.
• There were no "A" hospitals in South Dakota or North Dakota.

To determine each state’s grade, Leapfrog used up to 28 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. When averaged, performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries.

Leapfrog estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at "A" hospitals, 50,000 lives at other facilities would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is peer-reviewed by a panel of national experts, and the Leapfrog Group receives guidance from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.