Four Illinois hospitals have been named to a new list of the best hospitals in the country, published by the media outlet Money in partnership with the Leapfrog Group.
Ascension Resurrection in Chicago, Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital in DeKalb, Northwestern Medicine Palos Hospital and University of Chicago Medical Center were named to the list, released by the groups for the first time Wednesday.
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Across the country, 148 hospitals made the list. Florida has the most hospitals on the list, at 26.
The nonprofit Leapfrog group also independently issues letter grades to hospitals across the country for hospital safety twice a year.
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The Leapfrog grades that come out twice a year are based on more than 30 measures of patient safety from the federal government, a Leapfrog survey and other sources. Measures include falls and trauma, hand hygiene and death rates among surgical patients with serious, treatable conditions.
To qualify for the new Money list, hospitals had to earn an A grade on the Leapfrog safety grades released in fall 2021. Hospitals were disqualified if they exceeded national mortality rates for heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or coronary bypass surgery, or if they got a C or lower on the spring 2022 Leapfrog safety grades.
Leapfrog also looked at safe medication ordering practices (to prevent medication errors), intensive care unit staffing, the response to “never events,” which are medical errors that should never happen such as operating on the wrong body part, and performance in heart surgeries, bariatric surgery, hip replacements and lung cancer surgeries.
A number of organizations release hospital safety grades and rankings each year, with each using their own methodologies and reaching sometimes differing conclusions. Hospitals that earn high marks often tout them in their advertising as they compete with other facilities to attract patients and the dollars that come with them.
Experts say patients may want to use rankings and grades as one piece of information when choosing where to receive care.
