SLUHN Hospitals Earn Straight A Grades for Safety

The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization, today released new Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, awarding A’s to every eligible St. Luke’s acute care hospital.

The 11 campuses – Bethlehem, Allentown, Anderson, Carbon, Easton, Monroe, Miners, Sacred Heart, Upper Bucks and Warren, as well as Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital – were among a select group of hospitals across the nation awarded an A for their commitment to keeping patients safe and meeting the highest safety standards in the nation.

“This rare achievement reflects St. Luke’s commitment to extending the very best care to every patient at all of our locations throughout the entire region,” says Donna Sabol, St. Luke’s Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer.

The Safety Grade assigns letter grades of A, B, C, D and F twice annually – in the spring and fall – to hospitals nationwide based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is the only rating solely focused on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections. Developed under the guidance of a panel of national experts, it uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals.

“Preventable deaths and harm in hospitals have been a major policy concern for decades,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “Significant variation in performance remains across U.S. hospitals. ... All hospitals are not the same.”

St Luke’s high marks from Leapfrog echo the assessment in August by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS).

In its annual quality and safety hospital review, CMS awarded 10 St. Luke’s hospitals the highest possible quality rating of five stars. St. Luke’s was the only health network in the Lehigh Valley to receive five-star ratings.

Nationwide, an elite 8 percent of 4,658 eligible hospitals earned five stars. Remarkably, of Pennsylvania’s 189 eligible hospitals, nearly half of the 21 that earned five stars were St. Luke’s hospitals.