US Hospital Safety Rankings Unveiled

Today, the Leapfrog Group released its Fall 2025 Hospital Safety Grades assigning letter grades to each state. States with the highest percentage of A grades for this cycle are Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and North Carolina.¹ Utah maintains its position at the top of the list for the fifth consecutive grading cycle. Meanwhile, 4 states—Iowa, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming—did not have a single hospital earn an A.¹

The Leapfrog Group's biannual assessment that assigns letter grades—ranging from A to F—to all general hospitals in the United States based on their ability to protect patients from medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. These preventable harms continue to affect one in four hospitalized patients and contribute to an estimated 250,000 deaths annually.¹

Health System Affiliation Strong Among Top-Performing Hospitals

As Leapfrog celebrates its 25th anniversary, the organization is taking a deeper look at the influence of hospital system consolidation on patient safety. “The Leapfrog Group was founded 25 years ago to improve American health care through transparency, and the Safety Grade has been a cornerstone of that effort,” The Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder, said in a statement. “As we mark this milestone year, for the first time we’re looking at how consolidation impacts patient safety. We want to understand if system leadership accelerates patient safety or not.”¹

The analysis found that 90% of hospitals receiving a Fall 2025 Safety Grade are part of a health system. For hospitals earning an A, that affiliation rate is even higher at 94%. This trend also applies to “Straight A” hospitals—those that have earned A grades for more than two consecutive years—with 95% of the 358 Straight A institutions belonging to health systems.¹

Notably, all 11 hospitals that have earned an A in every grading cycle since 2012 are system-affiliated. The 10 health systems with the highest number of A and straight A hospitals underscore the significant role that system leadership may play in sustaining strong safety performance.¹ (See below for the individual health system's data.)

Hospital Errors

One calculation said there were over 250,000 deaths per year as a result from medical errors in hospitals.² And according to an Office of Inspector General report, 27 percent of hospitalized Medicare patients experienced harm.³ The report detailed the types of harm events with the following: “The most common type of harm event was related to medication (43 percent), such as patients experiencing delirium or other changes in mental status. The remaining events related to patient care (23 percent), such as pressure injuries; to procedures and surgeries (22 percent), such as intraoperative hypotension; and to infections (11 percent), such as hospital-acquired respiratory infections.”³

About the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade remains the nation’s only rating system focused solely on safety outcomes related to preventable hospital harm. Updated twice yearly, the grades are based on a transparent, peer-reviewed methodology developed by leading patient safety researchers under the guidance of a National Expert Panel.¹

Published by The Leapfrog Group—an independent national nonprofit celebrating 25 years of advocacy for patient safety—the Safety Grade continues to provide patients and families with a trusted, independent resource for evaluating hospital safety. ¹

The full methodology and hospital grades are publicly available here.

References

1.The Leapfrog Group Announces Its Fall 2025 Hospital Safety Grades Leapfrog. November 14, 2025. Accessed November 14, 2025.
https://www.leapfroggroup.org/news-events/leapfrog-group-announces-its-fall-2025-hospital-safety-grades

2.Makary MA, Daniel M. Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ. 2016;353:i2139. Published May 3, 2016. doi:10.1136/bmj.i2139

3.Adverse Events in Hospitals: A Quarter of Medicare Patients Experienced Harm in October 2018. US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. May 5, 2022. Accessed November 14, 2025.
https://oig.hhs.gov/reports/all/2022/adverse-events-in-hospitals-a-quarter-of-medicare-patients-experienced-harm-in-october-2018/