Group rates more than 2,600 hospitals with single letter grade

News outlets report on how their local hospitals were graded by a nonprofit organization that culled patient safety ratings from a variety of sources and assigned a single letter grade to more than 2,600 hospitals in the United States.

Georgia Health News: Two New Tools Add To Health Care Transparency
It's called the transparency movement. Two new tools have surfaced this week to help patients on this information hunt. First, the Leapfrog Group, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, has rated 2,651 hospitals, including 78 in Georgia, on their patient safety records, giving them a single letter grade. The rating is based on 26 different measures collected by Leapfrog or by Medicare officials. The second consumer tool comes from UnitedHealthcare, which has introduced an online service for 14 million members in its health plans to compare medical providers' quality of care and estimate the cost of more than 100 common treatments and procedures (Miller, 6/7).

Minneapolis Star Tribune: In New Safety Test, Not All Minnesota Hospitals Earn A
A national patient-safety group has come up with a simple way to compare hospitals -- by giving them a letter grade -- and included 38 Minnesota hospitals in its new report card. The group, known as Leapfrog, graded 2,700 hospitals nationwide on a variety of safety measures, such as falls, infections and bed sores, in a report released Wednesday. Among the A's: Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis and Mayo Clinic's Methodist Hospital in Rochester.  Among the C's: the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview; and Mayo's Immanuel St. Joseph's in Mankato (Lerner, 6/6).

Health News Florida: On Hospital Report Cards, FL Does Well
Florida hospitals rated significantly better than the national average on the first "report card" published today by a non-profit group dedicated to patient safety. The Leapfrog Group released the scores of 2,600 hospitals across the country at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. Nationally, almost half scored a "C" or below, but in Florida, only 39 percent of those evaluated received a "C" or worse (Rabaza, 6/6).

Related KHN coverage: Lots of 'C's As Hospitals Get Graded For Patient Safety (Rau, 6/6).