More hospitals get an 'F' in leapfrog report

The Leapfrog Group’s fourth safety report card for general acute care hospitals, released Wednesday, shows little overall improvement in how well providers are preventing patient harm. A total of 2,539 hospitals were graded on 15 structural measures, such as whether the hospital has a full-time intensivist in the ICU; and 13 preventable adverse outcome measures, such as a patient death or serious injury due to an intravascular air embolism or a retained surgical object. The report includes two new preventable outcome measures—surgical site infections resulting from colon procedures and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.