3 Wisconsin Hospitals Receive 'D' Grade In Latest Review

MOUNT PLEASANT, WI -- The nonprofit group Leapfrog released its bi-annual round of hospital safety grades. See what your hospital scored.

18 Wisconsin hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new Fall 2018 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group on Thursday. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts and Texas had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. The states with the lowest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade are Connecticut, Nebraska, Washington D.C., Delaware and North Dakota, according to Leapfrog. Washington D.C., Delaware and North Dakota did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

Here are the grades Wisconsin hospitals were given by the Leapfrog Group:

Ascension St. Francis Hospital, Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital - Franklin Campus and Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine all received "D" grades this year.

The following hospitals recieved "A" grades:

Aurora Lakeland Medical Center - Elkhorn
Aurora Medical Center of Washington County - Hartford
Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center - Sheboygan
Bellin Memorial Hospital - Green Bay
Fort Healthcare - Fort Atkinson
Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin Community Memorial Hospital - Menomonee Falls
Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin St. Joseph's Hospital - West Bend
HSHS St. Mary's Hospital of Green Bay - Green Bay
HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital - Sheboygan
HSHS St. Vincent Hospital - Green Bay
Meriter Hospital - Madison
SSN Health St. Clare Hospital - Baraboo
SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital - Janesville
SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital - Madison
St. Agnes Hospital - Fond du Lac
St. Joseph's Hospital, Chippewa Falls
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority - Madison
Watertown Regional Medical Center - Watertown

“Health care was an important issue in the 2018 midterm elections, yet both parties are still neglecting the third leading cause of death in America—errors and infections in hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “Every elected official, from city councilors, to senators, to the President, should hold hospitals accountable and support efforts to improve patient safety.”

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 28 measures that are taken together to “produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.” The group uses performance measures from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)

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