Hospitals are seeing fewer infections, Leapfrog Group says

Hospitals and health systems are making important strides in patient safety, according to The Leapfrog Group.

The organization released its Fall 2024 Hospital Safety Grades Friday, and there’s undeniable good news for hospitals, and the patients relying on them. Hospitals saw a significant drop in infections and made gains in reducing medication errors, the report says.

In fact, hospitals are now faring better in patient safety metrics than before the COVID-19 pandemic, says Katie Stewart, director of health care ratings for the Leapfrog Group. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization focused on patient safety, examined nearly 3,000 hospitals in its latest report. The group releases safety grades twice a year.

“What we reported on last round is that we still had progress to be made, and we certainly do, but we are now below pre-pandemic levels in many cases, which is great to see,” Stewart tells Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“I think we want to continue to see those improvements in order to continue to drive change in patient safety,” she says. “But it's very promising to see these improvements across the board.”

(See part of our conversation with Katie Stewart about the fall hospital safety grades. The story continues below.)

Hospitals have made important progress even compared to Leapfrog’s Spring 2024 Hospital Grades, which also found hospitals were seeing fewer infections. But hospitals and health systems were still matching pre-pandemic levels, Leah Binder, Leapfrog’s president and CEO, said at the time.

In the fall of 2022, hospital-based infections reached their highest point since 2016, and healthcare leaders were alarmed that patient safety gains eroded substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Leapfrog Group’s fall 2024 report card finds hospitals have reduced three common infections by more than 30% since the fall of 2022.

Central line-associated bloodstream infections fell by 38% ;

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections dropped by 36% ;

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus decreased by 34% .

The Leapfrog Group also more hospitals have adopted systems that are designed to reduce medication errors.

In the fall 2024 report, 88.1% of hospitals were using Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), up from 65.6% in 2018. Those systems can catch common medication errors.

In addition, 86.9% of hospitals are using Bar Code Medication Administration this year, compared to 47.3% in 2018. Those systems can ensure patients are getting the proper medications.

“Medication errors are very common in the hospital, some of the most common errors that can occur, and it's important to have a variety of different structures in place to prevent them,” Stewart says.

More hospitals are also making progress in improving hand hygiene, with the majority of hospitals reaching the Leapfrog Group’s standards, according to a report released in September.

Considering the progress in a number of different metrics, Stewart says hospitals have demonstrated that safety is a high priority.

“It's a recommitment to patient safety,” Stewart says. “It's dedication. It's taking leadership and staff to make patients a priority and really recommit to providing that safe and reliable care that we saw some lapses in during the pandemic, certainly.”

While the improvements are heartening, Stewart says there’s room for hospitals to do better when it comes to protecting patients.

“Overall, the outlook remains hopeful, but we're certainly not where we need to be as a country,” she says. “Too many lives are lost to preventable errors. It's clear that with these results in the fall grades that hospitals are taking this issue seriously, and they deserve recognition for prioritizing patient safety, certainly. But there's always room for improvement.”

Hospitals looking to do better at patient safety must make an organization-wide commitment, Stewart says.

She also says hospital CEOs and boards must make patient safety the highest priority.

“That's where it has to all start,” Stewart says. “If the C-suite isn't invested in it, it's hard to get the staff on board. What we see in hospitals that are performing well is that there's a great presence of leadership. They're rounding, they're making commitments to improvements.”

The Leapfrog Group gives safety grades similar to those in school report cards, with “A” grades for top performers and “F” for those that are falling short.

Utah had the highest percentage of hospitals getting an “A,” marking the third consecutive report that Utah reached the top.

The states with the highest percentage of “A” hospitals are Utah, Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey, California, Rhode Island, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Carolina. California reached the top 10 for the first time since fall 2014, the group said.

• Read more: In a first, Leapfrog Group's hospital safety grades rank the top metro areas

A separate report released by the American Hospital Association also found that hospital performance has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. On average, patients in hospitals were 20% more likely to survive in the first quarter of 2024 than in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the report.