Maryland Hospital Grades 2021

by

You are hurt. You are having a baby.  You need surgery.  You were in a car accident. You want to pick the best possible hospital in Maryland to treat you, right?   To make the right choice, you need some idea of the quality of the hospital that is treating you.

The Leapfrog Group, a non-profit watchdog organization, conducts biannual analysis and provides safety grades of health care systems found in each state across the country.  Hospital ratings are like looking at Consumer Reports.  Are they perfect?  Not even close.  Will you get more by looking at hospital ratings than an hour of independent research on your own?  I think you absolutely will.

Leapfrog has done so since 2012. But the Leapfrog rankings excluded Maryland until 2017, which I talk about at the end of this post for those who are interested.

The hospital grading system

The safety grade that Leapfrog provides includes 27 different measurements, all of which are taken to produce and then assign a single letter grade of A, B, C, D, and F. Those letter grades then serve as a representation of a hospital’s overall performance in keeping its patients safe from both preventable harm and medical errors. Leapfrog collects and uses its performance measures from a number of sources including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and the CDC taking into account medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections when calculating the grades.

How safe are Maryland hospitals?

The first rankings of Maryland hospitals in the fall of 2017 were sub-par, if that. Only 15 hospitals received an “F” rating in 2017, and Bon Secours, a Baltimore hospital, received one of them.

The study confirmed what we had already told consumers on our website — this hospital is awful.  MRSA infections, blood infections, and urinary tract infections during ICU stays are ridiculously high. Bon Secours also had a high rate of surgical wounds that split open after major stomach and abdominal surgeries.

In 2017, only one Maryland also only received one “A” rating: Howard County General in Columbia, which is owned by Johns Hopkins.

So in 2017, Maryland had only one “A” hospital (but see the 2021 update below). I’ve always told people as someone who handles medical malpractice cases, that we are lucky to have the hospitals we have in the Baltimore area.  Awful mistakes happened but Maryland has some of the best hospitals in the nation.

But Maryland found itself with seven “B’s”, 26 “C’s”, eight “D’s”, and of course don’t forget one “F.”  Depressing.  Maryland was actually only one of six states and the District of Columbia that received a failing grade (joining California, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, and New York). The 2017 report also indicated that Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, and Virginia contained the highest number of hospitals that received an “A.” In contrast, Maryland, Delaware, New York, North Dakota, and Washington DC contained the lowest number of hospitals receiving an “A.”

Has Maryland improved?

Maryland hospitals have improved since the first report came out. In the 2018 report,  Maryland now has three hospitals that have received an “A” while six moved from a “C” in 2017 to a “B” in 2018. Unfortunately, Maryland still does have a hospital that earned an “F”, but the good news is that a different hospital, Fort Washington Medical Center, received the failing grade.  With good reason, this hospital is a train wreck.

In 2018 (released in 2019), Howard County General Hospital of Columbia, Johns Hopkins Hospital of Baltimore, and Northwest Hospital of Randallstown are currently the top three hospitals in Maryland all having received an “A” on their last report card from Leapfrog. We all know that while there are many meritorious medical malpractice cases against Hopkins every year, that is an amazing institution.  Northwest was a pleasant surprise.

Now, in 2021, it seems that everyone has stepped up their game.  Now 11 Maryland hospitals have an “A” grade.

2021 Maryland Hospitals Grades

Listed for you below are the rest of the hospitals in Maryland and their corresponding grades to help you in deciding where to go.

Grade A

Grade B

Grade C

Grade D

Grade F

Why did Maryland have a waiver?

maryland hospital gradesMaryland had a waiver before 2017.  Why did Maryland have a waiver in the first place?  Well, that is a good question.  A federal waiver that exempted Maryland from having to report key safety metrics at a national level that prevented Leapfrog from collecting the information at a national level.

Again, why?  I don’t know what the argument was.  The Maryland Health Care Commission thankfully jumped in and helped get the waiver lifted.  Obviously, this increased transparency and allowed Leapfrog access to the data it needed to include Maryland in its rankings.  How many people died of medical malpractice between 2012-2017?

Always remember that medical errors, accidents, and infections in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.  Leapfrog, a non-profit, wants to give people some idea which hospitals are the safest so they can make an informed choice.  This is what we all want, right?  The information to make the right choice.

In 2021, voters and consumers are demanding more transparency.  This makes me wonder if medical malpractice payouts and other related information might be next.