The Leapfrog Group highlighted broad improvements across several patient safety measures in this year’s spring release of hospital safety grades, the first reflecting changes made after a court-ordered removal of hospitals that declined to voluntarily submit information to the watchdog group.
Top marks were handed out to 917 hospitals, with Leapfrog outlining a particularly high share of “A” hospitals in the states of Connecticut (where 64% of hospitals received an “A”), Virginia (59%), South Carolina (51%), Utah (50%) and Montana (44%).
A hospital’s assigned grade is calculated by reviewing recent data on up to 22 patient safety measures, including a 10-part Medicare composite of reported patient safety and adverse events. Among these, Leapfrog said it saw “significant improvement” in 17 measures, including those related to healthcare-associated infections and medication safety plus multiple items related to patient experience.
“The good news is that hospitals across the country are making meaningful strides in patient safety and helping save countless lives,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said. “But not all hospitals are the same. That’s why it’s so important for people to consult Safety Grades and do their research when choosing a hospital.”
Of note, the latest release excludes 450 hospitals that did not participate in Leapfrog’s 2024 or 2025 surveys.
The group made that decision after being ordered by a federal judge in March to remove the safety grades of five Tenet Healthcare subsidiary hospitals that successfully argued they were being unfairly punished with poor marks for not voluntarily submitting data. Leapfrog said in March and again this week that it would similarly pull the grades for hundreds of other non-participating hospitals to maintain a consistent methodology across all reviewed hospitals.
“We do not pick and choose hospitals for different methodologies,” Binder told Fierce Healthcare in March. “We do one methodology for the safety grade for all hospitals.”
Maggie Gill, eastern group president of Palm Beach Health Network, the Tenet subsidiary system, said this week in a statement that “Leapfrog clearly recognizes that it cannot accurately grade non-participating hospitals, and we’re glad to see these hospitals will no longer be subjected to grades based on made-up data.”
“A federal judge confirmed that the grades were intentionally designed to punish non-participating hospitals and coerce them into compliance to fulfill Leapfrog’s acknowledged goal of maximizing revenue,” Gill said. “We will continue to advocate for meaningful reforms so that hospitals are no longer subjected to Leapfrog’s misleading and deceptive grading systems and bullying tactics.”
Leapfrog is appealing the court’s decision as well as reviewing potential methodology changes for upcoming gradings so that those hospitals can again be included in the gradings.
For the March 2026 grades, 33% of hospitals included in the roughly 2,800-hospital database update received an “A” grade, 26% a “B” grade, 23% a “C” grade, 2% a “D” grade and less than 1% an “F” grade. The 450 hospitals that were not assigned a letter grade represent 16% of the total.
The latest release’s distribution of scores is substantially shifted upward when compared to the prior update in the fall. That round of grading had roughly the same number of hospitals receiving higher letter grades, but far more facilities were assigned lower grades—224 “D” hospitals versus 55 this time around, and 22 “F” hospitals versus just five in the spring.
The stark difference appears to reflect the impact of Leapfrog’s previous methodology, which critics said assigned lower scores to non-participating hospitals. Those facilities are now designated as "Grade Not Assigned."
More broadly, Leapfrog highlighted the gains hospitals have made on healthcare-associated infections since it observed a spike in the late 2022 grades. Specifically, central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) decreased by 50%, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) decreased by 45%, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) decreased by 42% and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) decreased by 30% since then.
Elsewhere, the group said more hospitals’ computerized physician order entry systems and bar code medication administration systems, both of which can help prevent common prescribing errors, are now meeting its standards. Since a fall 2023 low point, there have also been increases across all five of its measures related to patient experience: nurse communication, doctor communication, staff responsiveness, communication about medicine and discharge information.