How safe is your hospital? A new Hospital Safety Score hands out A, B, C, D or F letter grades to more than 2,600 hospitals on their overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Score is to reduce the more than 180,000 yearly deaths from hospital errors and injuries by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm, says the Leapfrog Group, a healthcare safety, quality and economics consortium. Nine of the world's top experts in patient and hospital safety came together to create the Hospital Safety Score, which is comprised of 26 evidence-based, national measures of hospital safety, including hand hygiene, antibiotic administration, retained foreign objects and pressure ulcers. The Hospital Safety Score uses nationally available publicly reported data, which currently includes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey.

"A hospital may have the best surgeons and greatest technology in the world, but unless it is preventing infections, and eliminating medical and medication errors and injuries, it is not delivering on a very basic premise: ensuring the safety of you and your loved ones," says the Leapfrog Group.

Leapfrog reviewed data for all general acute care hospitals. Some general hospitals did not have sufficient data available, and therefore did not receive a Safety Score. More than 2,600 hospitals will be receiving a score. Hospitals excluded from receiving a score include critical access hospitals, specialty hospitals, pediatric hospitals, hospitals in Maryland and territories exempt from public reporting to CMS, and others. Surgical centers and specialty hospitals are excluded.

Dan O'Connor