Leapfrog Group releases latest patient safety ratings

Hospitals have improved their processes care and safe practices, but they’ve got much work to do to improve performance on outcomes, according to The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2014 update of its Hospital Safety Score (HSS). The HSS assigns letter grades to hospitals based on ability to prevent errors, injuries, and infections.

Since April, Leapfrog found improvement on all 15 of its process measures including hand hygiene, medication reconciliation, and physician staffing in intensive care units. But it also found a lack of progress on outcomes, with declines on measures such as preventing surgical site infections in patients who have undergone gone major colon surgery.

Interestingly, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas—which has come under fire for its failure to properly diagnose an Ebola patient—received an A grade on the fall 2014 HSS for its past performance on safety measures.

Read the Leapfrog release for more information.