You are hurt. You are having a baby. You need surgery. You were in a car accident. You want to pick the best possible hospital in Maryland to treat you, right? To make the right choice, you need some idea of the quality of the hospital that is treating you.
The Leapfrog Group, a non-profit watchdog organization, conducts biannual analysis and provides safety grades of health care systems found in each state across the country. Hospital ratings are like looking at Consumer Reports. Are they perfect? Not even close. Will you get more by looking at hospital ratings than an hour of independent research on your own? I think you absolutely will.
This page will provide the latest Leapfrog ratings for Maryland hospitals as of 2024.
The hospital grading system
The safety grade that Leapfrog provides includes 27 different measurements, all of which are taken to produce and then assign a single letter grade of A, B, C, D, and F. Those letter grades then serve as a representation of a hospital’s overall performance in keeping its patients safe from both preventable harm and medical errors. Leapfrog collects and uses its performance measures from a number of sources including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and the CDC taking into account medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections when calculating the grades.
How safe are Maryland hospitals?
When Leapfrog first came out with safety grades for Maryland hospitals about 8 years ago, the state had some of the lowest grades in the country. In the first report, in fact, Maryland had only 1 hospital that earned a A grade. Since then, however, Maryland hospitals have significantly increased their grades across the board. In the 2024 hospital safety grade report, a total of 13 Maryland hospitals earned a letter grade of A and 15 hospitals earned a B. Maryland didn’t have any hospitals that earned a grade of lower than C.
2024 Maryland Hospitals Grades
Listed for you below are the rest of the hospitals in Maryland and their corresponding grades to help you in deciding where to go.
Grade A
Grade B
Grade C
Note that many hospitals in Maryland elected not to participate in the Leapfrog survey, presumably because they expected to get a very low grade. One glaring example of this is Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore, which consistently earned F grades in prior years.
About the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is a rating system that assesses hospital safety by focusing on how well hospitals prevent medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections, and other harms to patients. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization, assigns grades (A, B, C, D, or F) to hospitals based on their performance across multiple patient safety measures. These ratings are published twice a year, in the spring and fall.
The grades are based on data from sources like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the American Hospital Association, and hospitals’ self-reported data to Leapfrog. The evaluation includes factors such as:
1. Infection Rates: Measures hospital-acquired infections, such as MRSA and C. diff.
2. Surgical Safety: Assesses surgery outcomes and protocols for avoiding complications.
3. Medication Safety: Examines protocols for safe medication practices and error prevention.
4. Maternity Care: Looks at birth outcomes, early elective deliveries, and C-section rates.
5. Staffing Levels: Reviews staffing levels, especially ICU nurse-to-patient ratios.
6. Patient Experience: Considers patient feedback on communication and overall care.
The goal of the Leapfrog Safety Grades is to help patients make informed choices about hospital care based on safety, and to encourage hospitals to improve quality standards. The latest ratings can be viewed on Leapfrog’s website, which allows users to search by location and hospital name.