Connecticut Stands Out in National Ranking by Hospital Watchdog Group

By Joe O’Leary

November 29 @ 9:00 am

The latest national review of more 3,000 hospitals by the watchdog organization The Leapfrog Group saw Connecticut rise from 12th to 3rd place in a state-by-state ranking that weighed hospitals for their overall safety, quality of service and prevention of accidents.

The nonprofit group graded the hospitals from A to F and found that 14 of the state’s 28 hospitals received A grades for patient safety – with four of those hospitals improving to A-grades since Leapfrog’s last rankings in the spring. That helped Connecticut surge forward from 12th place to 3rd place in the recent fall ranking.

Why such a leap? From spring to fall, Leapfrog upgraded its ratings for Danbury Hospital, Norwalk Hospital, Johnson Memorial Hospital and Charlotte Hungerford Hospital from B or C grades to A grades. In that time, only Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury fell from an A grade to a B grade, contributing to a net climb from 11 to 14 A-grade ratings this year.

Other hospitals that received A grades in the fall included: Bridgeport’s St. Vincent Medical Center, Farmington’s UConn Health, Hartford Hospital, Meriden’s MidState Medical Center, Middletown’s Middlesex Hospital, New Britain’s Hospital of Central Connecticut, Norwich’s Backus Hospital, Sharon Hospital, Stamford Hospital, and Willimantic’s Windham Community Memorial Hospital.

Leapfrog assigned Hospital Safety Grades to about 3,000 facilities nationwide, tracking 22 national patient safety measures and additional data sources to achieve its markings. The list is not exhaustive and is lacking critical access hospitals, rural emergency hospitals, long-term care facilities and federal hospitals, in addition to specialty facilities like surgery centers and cancer hospitals.

The grades were informed by standards including ICU staffing, bar code medication use, total nursing care hours, staff communication, hand hygiene and tracking of negative patient outcomes related to safety. These ranged from falls to infections to in-hospital care complications.

Connecticut landed third nationwide in the Leapfrog ratings and was surpassed by only Utah and Virginia, where more than half of all hospitals also achieved A-grades. The Nutmeg State leapfrogged over North Carolina, New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania, among other states, to land in the top 3.

The ratings reflect improving standards in Connecticut and nationally, with The Leapfrog Group reporting declining instances of in-hospital infections, and better use of hand hygiene and medication safety nationwide. In the last two years, the group said, national reports of bloodstream infections, urinary tract infections and MRSA are all down more than 30 percent nationally.

To read the full Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Grades, click here.