SWFL hospitals receive mixed grades from A to D for overall patient safety

The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2019 Hospital Safety Grades were announced on Thursday, and hospitals across Southwest Florida received mixed results from “A” to “D”.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is a bi-annual grading assigning “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” and “F” letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the U.S. It is the nation’s only rating focused entirely on patient safety—preventable errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.

Of the 11 available hospitals in SWFL here’s how they were graded for overall patient safety:

Lee Memorial, Cape Coral Hospital, Gulf Coast Medical Center, Health Park Medical Center, and Englewood Community Hospital all received the “A” grade.

Lehigh Regional Medical Center received a “B” Grade.

Bayfront Health Punta Gorda, Bayfront Health Port Charlotte, Fawcett Memorial Hospital all received a “C” grade.

NCH North Naples Hospital and NCH Baker Hospital both received “D” grades. NCH is currently suing Leapfrog Group over the given grade.

According to court documents, NCH told Leapfrog, based on the data it gathered, giving them a “D” rating for patient safety would be “false and misleading.” NCH does not comment directly on pending legal matters. But it still responded in the midst of the lawsuit:

“Because this case involves citizens of different states, the federal court system has concurrent jurisdiction with the state court system. Yesterday, Leapfrog removed the entire case currently pending in front of Judge Hayes to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. A new case in the Middle District will be opened, where NCH will re-file its Verified Complaint for Injunctive Relief and Motion for Temporary Injunction. NCH will request that the federal court schedule a hearing on the Motion for Temporary Injunction prior to the date of publication of November 7th, 2019, but it will be left to the discretion of the federal judge as to whether a hearing is scheduled. This last fall was the first time NCH has not participated in Leapfrog’s hospital survey.”

For more information on how the grading of hospitals’ patient safety is calculated, visit the Leapfrog Group hospital safety page here.

To check the grades of other hospitals you can do a search on the Leapfrog Hospital Safety grades here.