No Tampa Bay region hospitals received a failing grade for patient safety but several got a C in new rankings released this week by Leapfrog, an independent nonprofit.
That included Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, the city’s marquee hospital, which was purchased by Orlando Health in 2020. Officials there said the ranking still reflects the hospital’s performance under its previous owner.
“Due to the lag in outcomes data used for grading by national organizations such as The Leapfrog Group, current grades do not reflect outcomes achieved after Orlando Health’s acquisition of these two facilities,” the firm said in a news release.
The other local hospitals that received a C grade were HCA Florida South Tampa, Bravera Health Spring Hill and Bravera Health Brooksville.
Tampa General Hospital, the region’s only Level 1 trauma center, received a B. St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa was ranked A.
The ranking does not include children’s hospitals. Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital received a Leapfrog Top Hospital award in 2021.
Overall, Florida was ranked No. 10 in the country for patient safety, up from 19th in 2019.
Leapfrog began ranking hospitals a decade ago in an effort to reduce the more than 200,000 yearly deaths from hospital errors and injuries by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm. It ranks more than 3,000 hospitals across the U.S. twice a year on how well they keep patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.
The grades are based on 22 measures of hospital performance, including data reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They include the number of patients who get blood or urinary tract infections, complications after surgery, falls and bedsores. The rankings also consider the number of qualified nurses and whether doctors in intensive care units are specially trained for that role.
Click here to search for hospitals by name, city, state or ZIP code in Florida and across the country.
