Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is a letter grade, A through F, given twice a year to about 3,000 general hospitals by the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by large employers in 2000. The grade measures one thing: how well a hospital protects patients from preventable harm, such as infections, medication errors, falls, bedsores, surgical mistakes and objects left inside a patient. It uses roughly 30 measures drawn from Medicare data and a voluntary hospital survey.

The spread between grades is not cosmetic. Leapfrog's own analysis, done with researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, estimated that a patient's risk of dying from a preventable error is about 90 percent higher at a D or F hospital than at an A hospital, and about 35 percent higher at a C. In a given cycle roughly 30 percent of hospitals get an A, about 25 percent a B, 35 percent a C, and the rest a D or F. Texas has plenty of A hospitals and plenty of Cs, sometimes in the same city and the same health system. The grade is free to look up by hospital name at hospitalsafetygrade.org. It does not measure how good a hospital's surgeons are at a particular operation, so it is best used as a floor: a place to rule out, not a way to pick the single best surgeon.

The takeaway: before any planned hospital admission, check the Leapfrog grade. Given a choice between an A and a C for the same procedure at similar prices, the A is the easy call. Given a C at a higher price, you have a reason to look elsewhere.