Iowa only has a few hospitals that got the top grade in a recent set of hospital safety ratings.
The ratings were from Leapfrog. In the ratings, Leapfrog gave hospitals throughout the country, including 33 here in Iowa, letter grades for hospital safety.
Of the Iowa hospitals graded, only three received an A. This works out to 9.09 percent of the graded hospitals in the state. This put Iowa 45th in the country for percentage of A-graded hospitals.
This is worse than the state did in the ratings from spring of this year. In those earlier ratings, Iowa was ranked 39th in the nation with 19.35 percent of its hospitals receiving an A.
On the positive side, Iowa didn’t have any hospitals that received an F grade in the most recent ratings. And only two of its hospitals got a D.
The most common grade among Iowa hospitals in the recent ratings was, by a wide margin, the C grade. This grade was given to 21 Iowa hospitals, just a little short of two-thirds of the state’s graded hospitals. Next in line was the B grade, with seven of the state’s hospitals receiving this grade.
Why do you think so many hospitals in the state are stuck in a middle grade when it comes to hospital safety? What do you think would best help with moving Iowa’s hospitals forward into higher ratings?
There are a range of safety problems that patients here in Iowa could encounter at hospitals. When such problems lead to harmful medical errors, medical malpractice claims could help patients get the financial relief they need.