These Are The Safest Hospitals In NC, Report Says. See If Yours Made The List
(The Charlotte Observer, Evan Moore) — How safe are North Carolina hospitals? A national health care watchdog group determined the state had dropped outside the top 10 in its latest hospital rankings.
The Leapfrog Group released its spring 2024 Hospital Safety Grades on Thursday, May 1, scoring local hospitals with A through F letter grades. In its report, North Carolina hospitals were rated the 12th safest in the United States — the lowest ranking since 2022. In total, 92 hospitals in North Carolina received safety grades in Leapfrog’s spring 2025 report. Utah was ranked No. 1, with the highest percentage of hospitals that received A grades. Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut and South Carolina followed, respectively. Here’s how Charlotte and Raleigh-area hospitals stacked up in the new rankings, how the grades are calculated, and how the data should be interpreted.
What makes a hospital safe? The Hospital Safety Grade list assigns a letter grade to general hospitals in the U.S. based on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections that kill or harm patients. About 30 measures are used to determine these safety grades. The Leapfrog Group also utilized these five patient experience measures that have a direct relationship with safety outcomes to come up with grades:
Nurse communication
Doctor communication
Staff responsiveness
Communication about medicines
Discharge communication
Grades are assigned using publicly available data, and measures’ scores are calculated using patient responses to a national and standardized survey following a hospital visit, Leapfrog said.
Here are North Carolina’s Leapfrog safety rankings in recent years:
To read how safe Raleigh-area hospitals are and how safety grades are calculated, read more here