Hospital-acquired infections a safety issue in central KY hospitals, report says
A national watchdog group recently scored some Central Kentucky hospitals below average for safety metrics like infections, patient falls and harmful events.
The Leapfrog Group is a nonprofit organization that provides ratings and safety data for hospitals, and it recently released grades for nearly 3,000 short-term, acute care hospitals across the country. The organization updates grades twice each year, once in the spring and once in the fall.
Out of seven local hospitals, one saw an improved grade this spring compared to the fall, and two got lower letter grades. All seven hospitals participated in Leapfrog’s voluntary self-reporting survey.
“Transparency is key. The Leapfrog hospital survey is voluntary, unlike some of those other measures that we include that are from CMS, and I think that when a hospital does do our survey, it shows that they’re committed to being transparent about performance at their hospital, for better or for worse. It keeps them accountable for the care that they’re providing annually,” Leapfrog Group program analyst Alex Campione said in an April 28 interview with McClatchy.
Across the U.S., some safety metrics are seeing performance improvements after pandemic-era declines.
“We are seeing that the patient experience and the health care-acquired infections are continuing to improve,” Campione said.
But although national averages are improving for at least two metrics, patient experience measures have yet to make a full recovery, Campione said. Additionally, some local hospitals scored below average this spring for infections and communication about medicines, a key factor in patient experience.
A health care-acquired or “associated” infection is one that wasn’t present when a patient was admitted to the hospital, but developed due to poor infection control.
Leapfrog calculates its hospital safety grades based on a combination of a voluntary survey and mandatory reporting from third-party sources, such as the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Kentucky dropped from 22nd to a tied 36th place in the state rankings this spring for the greatest percentage of “A” hospitals. Kentucky and Kansas tied with 23.3% of each state’s hospitals receiving As.
Here’s what to know about how Central Kentucky hospitals performed in Leapfrog’s latest grading cycle, plus how to interpret ratings and which areas should be most heavily considered.
Baptist Health Lexington
Spring 2025 grade: B
Fall 2024 grade: A
Spring 2024 grade: A
Here are the areas in which Baptist Health Lexington scored below average this spring:
MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection
Infection in the urinary tract
Surgical site infection after colon surgery
Sepsis infection after surgery
Kidney injury after surgery
Serious breathing problem
Harmful events
Patient falls and injuries
Falls causing broken hips
Hand washing (Baptist Health Lexington received a 40 out of 100 for hand washing; the average was 74.4.)
Effective leadership to prevent errors
“We continue to work together as a system to review the Leapfrog patient safety scores and find opportunities for improvement and collaboration,” Baptist Health Lexington spokesperson Ruth Ann Childers wrote in a May 8 emailed statement to the Herald-Leader. “Our spring grade does not reflect a change in our ability to provide high quality, safe care, but presents an opportunity for evaluation and continuous improvement.”
UK Good Samaritan Hospital
Spring 2025 grade: B
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: B
Here are the areas in which UK Good Samaritan Hospital scored below average this spring:
Infection in the blood
Infection in the urinary tract
Sepsis infection after surgery
Kidney injury after surgery
Harmful events
Patient falls and injuries
University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital
Spring 2025 grade: B
Fall 2024 grade: B
Spring 2024 grade: B
Here are the areas in which scored University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital below average this spring:
MRSA infection
Surgical site infection after colon surgery
Sepsis infection after surgery
Kidney injury after surgery
Harmful events
Patient falls and injuries
“Ensuring the highest standards of patient safety and quality remains a driving force behind the work we do every day at UK HealthCare,” spokesperson Allison Perry wrote in a May 8 emailed statement to the Herald-Leader. “As an academic medical system that serves patients at UK Chandler Hospital, UK Good Samaritan Hospital, Kentucky Children’s Hospital, UK King’s Daughters and UK St. Claire, we care for some of Kentucky’s most critically ill and medically complex patients. We continue to invest in the people, tools and systems that support our mission of excellence and have made significant and ongoing investments to advance the quality of care and safety outcomes, reflected in these latest Leapfrog ratings. Importantly, that commitment has also earned UK HealthCare the top hospital ranking in Kentucky from U.S. News & World Report for a decade, with multiple specialties also receiving a top 50 ranking.”
Saint Joseph Hospital
Spring 2025 grade: C
Fall 2024 grade: C
Spring 2024 grade: C
Here are the areas in which Saint Joseph Hospital scored below average this spring:
Sepsis infection after surgery
Dangerous object left in patient’s body
Blood leakage
Accidental cuts and tears
Harmful events
Dangerous bed sores
Collapsed lung
Communication about medicines
Communication about discharge
Communication with nurses
Responsiveness of hospital staff
Saint Joseph East
Spring 2025 grade: C
Fall 2024 grade: B
Spring 2024 grade: B
Here are the areas in which Saint Joseph East scored below average this spring:
Infection in the urinary tract
Harmful events
Dangerous bed sores
Patient falls and injuries
Collapsed lung
Communication about medicines
Communication about discharge
Data was unavailable about Saint Joseph East’s performance on four metrics, including MRSA infection, infection in the blood, surgical site infection after colon surgery and death from serious treatable complications. The unavailability was not due to a lack of reporting. Reasons may include that the service isn’t something a particular hospital provides or because the hospital didn’t have enough patients or cases to report data for a particular condition or procedure, according to Leapfrog.
Officials with Saint Joseph Hospital and Saint Joseph East were not immediately available for comment.
Georgetown Community Hospital
Spring 2025 grade: B
Fall 2024 grade: B
Spring 2024 grade: A
Here are the areas in which Georgetown Community Hospital scored below average this spring:
Accidental cuts and tears
Patient falls and injuries
Specially trained doctors care for patients in the intensive care unit (Georgetown Community Hospital received a 5 out of 100 for this metric, the lowest score given.)
Data was unavailable for five metrics, not due to any lack of reporting.
Clark Regional Medical Center
Spring 2025 grade: A
Fall 2024 grade: A
Spring 2024 grade: B
Clark Regional Medical Center scored below average for one metric this spring:
Specially trained doctors care for patients in the ICU (the hospital received a 5 out of 100 for this metric, the lowest score given.)
Data was unavailable for three metrics, not due to any lack of reporting.
“Clark Regional Medical Center and Georgetown Community Hospital remain deeply committed to delivering high-quality care to the Central Kentucky region. We are proud to have earned top marks in the Spring 2025 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades — a testament to our unwavering dedication to patient safety, clinical excellence, and the innovative work of our care teams,” Cliff Wilson, chief executive officer of Georgetown Community Hospital and market president for Lifepoint Central Kentucky, wrote in a May 8 emailed statement to the Herald-Leader.
Lawsuits over Leapfrog’s grading
Some hospital officials have criticized the way Leapfrog calculates its safety grades. Five hospitals from one Florida network filed a lawsuit against the organization April 30, calling Leapfrog’s methodology “flawed,” medical industry trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported May 1.
Three of the five hospitals included in the lawsuit received “F” grades, and the other two each received a “D.” In the spring 2025 grading cycle, 32% of U.S. hospitals received As, 24% got Bs, 35% were given Cs, 7% got a D and less than 1% received an F.
In an April 30 statement, Leapfrog president and CEO Leah Binder called the lawsuit “frivolous.”
“When we look at these hospitals’ results from Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), we see preventable suffering and death far exceeding the national average, and even the national average is too high. Instead of using their resources to file frivolous lawsuits, they should be improving how their patients are treated. That is the leadership communities expect from their hospitals,” Binder’s statement said, in part.
In an additional statement May 2, Leapfrog officials highlighted areas in which the hospitals involved in the lawsuit perform below national averages, and also mentioned two previous lawsuits from other entities.
Saint Anthony Hospital, which is based in Chicago, sued the Leapfrog Group in 2017 over a grade they called “inaccurate.” They filed the lawsuit the day before the grade was published (hospital officials receive them in advance of public release) and Leapfrog officials agreed not to publish it, though they said publishing the grade would not have constituted a false statement.
A Cook County Circuit Clerk Judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2018, Becker’s Hospital Review reported.
Florida-based NCH Healthcare System sued Leapfrog in 2019 to try to prevent the organization from publishing their “D” grade, saying they didn’t participate in the voluntary survey and received a low grade as a result. The hospital system ended up dropping the lawsuit.
“Our safety grades really work because we grade all eligible hospitals in the country, not just a subset of those ones that choose to give us data,” Campione said.
How are hospital grades calculated?
Safety grades are calculated using up to 22 national safety measures from the Leapfrog survey, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other data sources. The full methodology is available online and is peer-reviewed and published by the Journal of Patient Safety.
Grades are composed 50% by process and structural measures and 50% by outcome measures. The scoring scales differ by the chosen measure.
Leapfrog emphasizes you should not refuse emergency care based on hospital ratings. The group intends the scores to be used when planning things like childbirth, surgery referrals or chronic illness treatment. Campione said when patients have a choice, an “A” hospital is the best way to go.
“We know that those ‘A’ hospitals are doing a better job than the ‘B’ hospitals, and the ‘B’ hospitals are doing a better job than ‘C’ or ‘D’ hospitals in reducing infections, providing a safer environment, improving patient safety,” Campione said.
Campione added if she was choosing a hospital for planned care, she would particularly consider scores for patient experience metrics, such as communication with doctors and nurses.
“I think that the patient experience is actually very important,” Campione said. “It’s a great indicator of how comfortable patients felt talking to nurses and doctors, how available they were, and it can have a huge impact on whether mistakes are made.”
Other areas you should pay special attention to when choosing a hospital include hand washing, infection in the blood and patient falls, Leapfrog’s website says.
You should also consider how far off your hospital was from the average for any given standard. When evaluating a hospital, you can see the highest and lowest scores given, which helps in weighing a value. Depending on the measure, the “below average” category can include hospitals that scored just 0.01 points under goal, along with facilities with the lowest possible score.
For hospitals that responded to Leapfrog’s survey, there’s often information available about which areas the hospital has improved in and which areas are not going in the right direction.
A hospital being ungraded does not denote a lack of safety. Ratings are often unavailable for smaller providers, children’s hospitals, surgical centers and critical access hospitals. Leapfrog allows you to search for hospitals by name, location or state.
There’s an online search tool where you can find information about more hospitals.
Do you have a question about health care in Kentucky for our service journalism team? We’d like to hear from you. Email ask@herald-leader.com or fill out our Know Your Kentucky form.
