Hospital Safety Grades Spring 2025: Latest Leapfrog Results Explained
The Leapfrog Group has released its spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grades, assigning letter grades from A to F to more than 3,000 hospitals across the United States. These biannual safety assessments help patients identify hospitals with the strongest records of preventing medical errors, infections, and other patient harms.
What Are Hospital Safety Grades?
Unlike CMS star ratings that measure overall quality, Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades focus specifically on patient safety — how well hospitals protect patients from accidents, injuries, errors, and infections during their stay. The grades are calculated using 27 safety measures from CMS, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and other supplemental data sources.
Spring 2025 Key Findings
The spring 2025 safety grades reveal several important trends in hospital safety performance:
- National "A" grade rate: Approximately 30% of graded hospitals earned an "A" safety grade, reflecting strong safety protocols
- Persistent challenges: Healthcare-associated infections remain the most common area of concern, particularly for C. diff and MRSA
- Regional variations: Safety performance continues to vary significantly by state and region
- Rural vs. urban differences: Small and rural hospitals face unique safety challenges related to staffing and resources
How Safety Grades Are Determined
The Leapfrog methodology evaluates hospitals on four key domains:
- Infections: Rates of central line infections, catheter infections, surgical site infections, MRSA, and C. diff
- Problems with surgery: Foreign objects left in patients, air embolisms, falls, collapsed lungs, and other surgical complications
- Practices to prevent errors: Use of computerized ordering, ICU staffing by intensivists, nursing workforce, hand hygiene, and communication about medications
- Safety culture: Hospital survey results on safety culture, teamwork, and error reporting
Using Safety Grades to Choose a Hospital
Leapfrog recommends patients take these steps when using safety grades:
- Look up your local hospitals at hospitalsafetygrade.org
- Prioritize "A"-graded hospitals when you have a choice of facilities
- Ask your doctor about their hospital's safety performance
- Review specific safety measures rather than relying solely on the overall grade
- Check both the Leapfrog grade and CMS star rating for a comprehensive quality picture
What Hospitals Are Doing to Improve
Hospitals that have improved their safety grades typically invest in evidence-based safety practices including standardized surgical checklists, enhanced hand hygiene monitoring, antimicrobial stewardship programs, nurse staffing improvements, and robust error reporting systems.
Data sourced from The Leapfrog Group and CMS. Safety grades are updated twice yearly. For current grades, visit hospitalsafetygrade.org.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice.
Important
This article explains how hospital quality data works and is for general information only. It is not medical advice and must not be used to decide whether to seek, delay or refuse care — that is a decision for you and a clinician who knows your situation.
CMS quality measures describe care delivered during earlier reporting periods and are refreshed roughly quarterly. A hospital's staffing, services and performance can change well before the published numbers do.
hospiguide.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to CMS, Medicare, or any U.S. government agency, and publishes no ratings of its own.
Before acting on anything here, verify current details at Medicare.gov Care Compare or call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), TTY 1-877-486-2048.
HospiGuide.org Editorial Team
Our editorial team explains U.S. hospital quality data using official CMS datasets and government publications. We are not medical professionals, we do not recommend hospitals, and we accept no payment for coverage. Every factual claim is checked against a CMS or federal source. Read our editorial policy.
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