New Hampshire Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And The Worst

NEW HAMPSHIRE — Several Granite State hospitals received top safety marks while others didn't quite measure up in The Leapfrog Group's annual spring safety grades released last week.

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 New Hampshire:

• 2 hospitals received an A grade: Parkland Medical Center in Derry and Portsmouth Regional Hospital.
• 3 hospitals received a B grade: Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Exeter Hospital, and Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
• 6 hospitals received a C grade: Concord Hospital, Elliot Hospital in Manchester, Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, and Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover.
• 2 hospitals received a D grade: Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and Cheshire Medical Center in Keene.

Dean Carucci, the chief executive officer of Portsmouth Regional Hospital, said his team was "incredibly proud" of being only one of two hospitals to receive the highest grade from the survey — especially during a pandemic.

The hospital was also the only New Hampshire hospital listed on Newsweek's 2021 Best Maternity Care Hospital list in February which uses data from Leapfrog.

"Receiving the Leapfrog Hospital Safety 'A' Grade is affirmation of the relentless commitment our staff and providers make to patient safety on the Seacoast," he said.

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.