Judge orders hospital rating group to remove grades of these hospitals

An independent hospital rating organization has taken down grades of a South Florida health system after a judge ruled the group unfairly scored hospitals in semiannual patient safety reports.

The U.S. District Court judge’s order came after Palm Beach Health Network sued Leapfrog Group, claiming the patient safety organization targeted hospitals that refused to participate in Leapfrog’s twice-a-year report cards.

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks agreed with the hospitals, ruling that Leapfrog’s change in how it scored some hospitals had “no scientific basis, unfairly penalizes non-participating hospitals and misrepresents hospital safety.”

Leapfrog Group complied with a judge’s order to remove scores of the five hospitals by March 13. Those hospitals are Good Samaritan Medical Center, Delray Medical Center, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, St. Mary’s Medical Center and West Boca Medical Center.

Leapfrog is one of several sources for patients to check safety scores of their local hospitals. U.S. News & World Report lists ratings and other information on hospitals and doctors. Other consumer sites such as Healthgrades and Yelp collect feedback from patients.

Lisa McGiffert, a patient safety advocate and past director of Consumers Union Safe Patient Project, worried about how the ruling might affect other patient rating groups.

“It could have a chilling effect on any number of entities that are trying to do some kind of rating,” McGiffert said.

Hospitals cite damage from poor ratings

The five Palm Beach Health Network hospitals applauded the judge’s March 6 decision, which followed a trial earlier this year.

In an interview with USA TODAY, Delray Medical Center CEO Heather Havericak said Leapfrog’s grades harmed her hospital’s reputation as well as the other Palm Beach hospitals. The five Palm Beach hospitals are owned by Tenet Healthcare.

“Those grades have been very damaging to our hospital and our Palm Beach Health Network,” said Havericak.

Leah Binder, CEO of Leapfrog Group, said the judge’s order was “outrageous” and one her organization plans to appeal.

“This is just terrible for consumers,” Binder said. “Consumers deserve to know what we know, based on expert opinion, about the safety of the hospitals they entrust their lives to.”

What did the hospitals contest?

Leapfrog assigns letter grades to hospitals in the spring and fall each year after evaluating 22 categories of public and private data. The public data is from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The private safety and quality data is collected via voluntary surveys sent to hospitals.

The lawsuit focused on Leapfrog’s 2024 change in evaluating missing survey data from four safety and quality measures.

In the Spring 2024 survey, Leapfrog used averages from similar hospitals when calculating scores for hospitals that didn’t provide survey data. By Fall 2024, Leapfrog changed such scores to “limited achievement,” which effectively depressed overall scores of hospitals that didn’t complete the surveys, according to the judge’s order.

The five Palm Beach hospitals stopped participating in the Leapfrog survey during the COVID-19 pandemic to allocate limited resources elsewhere.

Following the Fall 2024 change in how Leapfrog scored missing categories of survey data, the five Palm Beach hospitals all received lower grades of Ds and Fs. Delray’s grade dropped from a D to an F following the scoring change.

During the trial, Havericak testified that walk-in visitors to her hospital’s emergency room dropped 7% to 8% since 2024. During the same period, patients transported via emergency medical crews increased.

“When we have these misleading rates for data that we didn’t even submit, confidence is going to be shaken for our community,” Havericak said. “We saw various patients that wanted to seek treatment at other places as a result of seeing these misleading safety grades.”

Binder said Leapfrog won’t grade roughly 300 non-participating hospitals when it releases its Spring 2026 report card. Those hospitals − including the five Palm Beach hospitals − will be scored using a new methodology by Fall 2026 Binder said.

What does this mean for consumers?

McGiffert, the patient safety advocate, urged consumers to check multiple sources when evaluating a hospital or other health system.

CMS, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, offers a searchable database with detailed quality scores for more than 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals. CMS assigns an “overall rating” to a hospital of up to five stars.

West Boca Medical Center received an overall rating of two stars on CMS’s five-star scale. CMS graded the other four Palm Beach hospitals each at one star overall. A Palm Beach Hospital Network spokesman declined to discuss the CMS ratings.

Unlike Leapfrog, CMS doesn’t widely promote its scores, so the public might not even be aware of the information, McGiffert said.

McGiffert said consumers who can choose which hospital or health facility to visit should do their homework and not rely on any single rating. She said people should talk to other patients, search for lawsuits or talk to their medical provider about things like nurse staffing levels and infection control.

“When it comes to health care, people are still pretty trusting,” McGiffert said. “You just really need to do your homework. If somebody says, ‘We’re an A rated hospital.’ What exactly does that mean?”