Virginia Makes Top List for Hospital Safety

Hospital safety has always been an important topic, but now with the spread of COVID-19 it is more important than ever. Hospitals are where we go when we are sick or hurt and we put our lives and trust into the men and women caring for us.

You might not know that hospitals have what they call “Safety Grades.” Safety Grades are determined by an organization known as the Leapfrog Group. They determine these grades by evaluating hospitals on 28 different metrics relating to patient care and safety. Those metrics are then broken down into an easy to understand letter grade on the A to F scale.

In a recent analysis by Grand Canyon University, they looked at the last four years worth of Hospital Safety Grades to create a list of which states had the most and least safe hospitals.
Looking at the states with the highest percentage of “A’s”, six different states had 50% or more of their hospitals earn the highest marks possible over the four years evaluated. Virginia came in second place with 52.8%, trailing 4.5% behind the number one state, Maine.

GCU also looked at the Leapfrog rankings of how each state ranks overall and said, “We looked at the average finishing position for every state in these rankings in the last four years and mapped out the results. Dark blue indicates a higher ranking and dark red a lower one.” You can see the map they are referencing below:

When listing out the top performing states for hospital safety, Virginia is always in the top 5. Maine takes the top spot in every category, followed by Virginia, Oregon, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

At the end of the day, hospital safety should be top priority to every hospital system in the U.S. but make sure you do your research if you can before you go.