844 hospitals earn top marks in Leapfrog's Fall 2016 hospital safety rankings

The majority of U.S. hospitals are performing well when it comes to patient safety, according to the fall ratings from the Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Grade, though many still fall behind, risking the lives of patients.

For its fall ratings release on 2,600 U.S. hospitals, 844 earned an A and 658 earned a B in the rankings. On the other hand, 954 earned a C, 157 earned a D and 20 scored an F.

According to Leapfrog, patient safety issues kill more than 200,000 patients a year.

[Also: Full list: These 844 hospitals earned an 'A' in the Fall 2016 Leapfrog ratings]

"Patients should be aware that hospitals are not all equally competent at protecting them from injuries and infections," Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder said in the announcement. "We believe everyone has the right to know which hospitals are the safest and encourage community members to call on their local hospitals to change, and on their elected officials to spur them to action."

Leapfrog makes the individual ratings available on its hospitalsafetygrade.org website or through its Hospital Safety Grade app.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also rates hospital safety based on federal reporting of incidents such as hospital-acquired infections. However, in addition to using CMS data from Hospital Compare, Leapfrog also includes results from its twice-a-year survey sent to participating hospitals in its methodology.

In addition to ranking hospitals, Leapfrog also breaks down overall patient safety on a state-by-state basis.

For the fall, Hawaii ranked as the top state for the first time in since Leapfrog starting its rankings.

[Also: Leapfrog CEO on hospital ratings: Public data will only improve healthcare]

Several states also showed big improvement in the survey. North Carolina moved up from 19th to 5th in the country while Idaho moved up from 45th in the last survey to 2nd this time.

While critics have said that the many different hospital ratings, like those from Healthgrades, U.S. News and World report, Consumer Reports and CMS, could often confuse prospective patients since the scores often don't add up, Binder last week said the added transparency these programs create do more good than harm.

"People are accustomed to a variety of perspectives on anything they're going to use or buy," she said.

Twitter: @HenryPowderly
Contact the author: henry.powderly@himssmedia.com