Dive Brief:
- Leapfrog Group released its 2019 list of the highest-quality hospitals, which included 120, or just 6% of eligible hospitals, the nonprofit group of purchasers and employers announced Tuesday.
- The list includes 10 children's hospitals, 37 general acute-care hospitals, 55 teaching hospitals and 18 rural hospitals.
- Florida scored the most hospitals (21) on the list, followed by California (16), Michigan (nine), Virginia (nine) and Illinois (eight). A total of 22 states did not have a hospital on the list, while 11 of them had just one hospital making the cut.
Dive Insight:
Leapfrog's 2019 list of top hospitals is one of many high profile reports measuring the safety and quality of patient care at U.S. facilities. Institutions that score well typically tout their ranking to attract patients and differentiate themselves from competitors. The reports also can help patients researching where to go for non-emergency care or procedures.
For the Leapfrog list of top-performing hospitals, institutions are selected for the recognition based on Leapfrog's annual hospital survey, which includes measures of patient safety, clinical quality, efficiency and management structures that prevent errors.
Last month the group released its fall 2019 list of patient safety rankings on 2,600 hospitals, finding that C was the most common grade (34%), followed by A (33%), B (25%) and D (8%). Fewer than 1% earned an F.
Hospitals often dispute the methodologies used to produce prominent rankings, which also include reports from U.S. News & World Report, IBM Watson Health and CMS. Part of the problem is that outcomes can vary because the methodology can differ. But the variation can be confusing to consumers.
A case in point are the differences between Leapfrog's new list and the rankings produced by U.S. News & World Report. For example, the teaching hospitals named to the Leapfrog list did not include the top five winners of U.S. News & World Report's 2019-2020 Best Hospitals Honor Roll. Those hospitals were Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Cleveland Clinic and New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, New York.
In the Leapfrog Group list, Advent Health — a 48-hospital system based in Altamonte Springs, Florida — had 10 of its hospitals in Florida on the list as well as one each in Kentucky, Georgia and Texas.
With seven hospitals, Kaiser Permanente's California hospitals were well represented in the teaching hospital category. Novant Health — based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — had four of its North Carolina hospitals on the list as well as its health system Novant Health UVA Health System in Virginia.