Eight Ascension hospitals receive top safety grades from The Leapfrog Group

Eight Ascension hospitals have received an "A" Hospital Safety Grade from The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization that evaluates hospitals across the United States on safety and quality performance. The grades are based on more than 22 measures related to accidents, errors, injuries, infections, and the systems hospitals use to prevent them.

Thomas A. Aloia, MD, MHCM, FACS, FACHE, Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Ascension said: “Our patients place their trust in us to deliver compassionate, high-quality care when it matters most. This recognition reflects the dedication of our caregivers, whose compassion and excellence bring our Mission to life every day—within our facilities and throughout the communities we serve.”

The Ascension hospitals awarded an "A" grade are:

- Ascension St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside (Jacksonville, FL)

- Ascension St. Vincent’s Medical Center Southside (Jacksonville, FL)

- Ascension Via Christi Hospital Manhattan (Manhattan, KS)

- Ascension Via Christi Hospital Wichita St. Teresa (Wichita, KS)

- Ascension Seton Cedar Park (Cedar Park, TX)

- Ascension Seton Northwest (Austin, TX)

- Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital (Appleton, WI)

- Ascension St. Joseph Hospital (Milwaukee, WI)

Several other facilities earned a "B" grade from Leapfrog this year.

Ascension states that each year it sets clinical priority goals for multidisciplinary teams to advance system-wide initiatives focused on safety and quality of care. Programs such as Recognize and Rescue have reportedly helped prevent more than 4,000 deaths since launch. Efforts in infection prevention have also led to reduced healthcare-associated infection rates.

Leapfrog's Hospital Safety Grade program is updated twice annually and provides ratings that focus solely on hospital safety issues like preventable medical errors and patient injuries. These results are publicly available at no cost through the program's website.

Due to a cyber attack in spring 2024 affecting data submission for many safety measures at key agencies including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control’s National Healthcare Safety Network, some Leapfrog grades were calculated with limited data from certain hospitals. According to Leapfrog methodology this can impact overall scores by giving greater weight to available metrics when others are missing; this effect may continue into 2027.

The Leapfrog Group was founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers with the goal of advancing patient safety through transparent reporting on hospital performance.