Healthcare-Associated Infections Down Across Hospitals in the U.S., According to Patient Safety Guide

The Leapfrog Group has released its spring 2024 Hospital Safety Grades, assigning scores of A, B, C, D, and F to “nearly 3,000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections.”

Patient experience across the country shows signs of improvement since fall 2023. Importantly, “preventable healthcare-associated infections [HAI] show a sustained drop after unprecedented rates during the height of the pandemic.”

HAI rates were “at their highest peak since 2016” in fall 2022, but since then, “92% of hospitals have improved performance on at least one of three dangerous preventable infections.” Central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, are all down by 30-35% since fall 2022, and 92% of hospitals have “improved performance on at least one of the three dangerous preventable infections.”

An estimated 250,000 people per year are thought to “die of preventable errors and infections in hospitals, which makes patient safety problems the third leading cause of death in the United States.”

According to this spring’s Patient Safety Guide, Utah is the number one state in patient safety performance, and the top three metro areas are Allentown (Pennsylvania), Winston-Salem (North Carolina), and New Orleans (Louisiana).