All 11 hospitals that have earned consecutive straight-“A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group earned a three-, four- or five-star rating from CMS. Of the five hospitals that earned an “F” grade from Leapfrog, three received a one-star rating from CMS. Star ratings were not available for the remaining two.
Leapfrog updated its spring safety grades May 6, recognizing 11 hospitals that have received an “A” grade in every consecutive update since 2012 — 29 straight. Of these hospitals, five received a five-star rating from CMS, three earned a four-star rating and three earned a three-star rating.
Meanwhile, Leapfrog assigned “F” grades to just five hospitals this spring, down from 23 in fall 2025. The sharp drop comes after Leapfrog withheld grades from 450 hospitals that did not participate in its voluntary survey in 2024 or 2025.
The policy change followed a federal judge’s ruling in March that five Palm Beach (Fla.) Health Network hospitals — part of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare — were deliberately punished with artificially low scores for not participating in the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey. The judge ordered Leapfrog to withdraw those hospitals’ grades for fall 2024, spring 2025 and fall 2025 and send corrective disclosures to all entities that paid to license those grades.
“Although the court ruling only applied to five hospitals, Leapfrog does not apply programmatic changes to individual hospitals because the hospital safety grade is a national program. We expect to resume full grading in fall 2026,” Leapfrog said in a May 6 news release.
Hospitals have pushed back on Leapfrog’s safety grades for years, arguing the methodology is flawed and unfairly penalizes hospitals that do not participate. Two hospitals filed similar lawsuits in 2017 and 2019, though the cases were eventually dismissed.
Leapfrog said it calculates hospital safety grades using up to 22 CMS patient safety measures, data from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and supplemental imputation. Read more about Leapfrog’s methodology here.
CMS updated its overall hospital quality star ratings May. 13, assigning a star rating to more than 4,600 hospitals based on 46 hospital quality measures. These are divided into five quality categories: safety of care, mortality, patient experience, readmission rates, and timely and effective care. This year, 384 hospitals earned a five-star rating and 199 received a one-star rating.
The CMS star ratings for Leapfrog’s spring 2026 straight-“A” hospitals:
Mayo Clinic (Phoenix) — Five stars
French Hospital Medical Center (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) — Five stars
Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim (Calif.) Medical Center — Four stars
St. Anne’s Hospital (Fall River, Mass.) — Three stars
Endeavor Health Elmhurst (Ill.) Hospital — Three stars
Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital (Winfield, Ill.) — Five stars
University of Chicago Medical Center — Four stars
Inova Loudoun Hospital (Leesburg, Va.) — Five stars
Sentara CarePlex Hospital (Hampton, Va.) — Four stars
Sentara Leigh Hospital (Norfolk, Va.) — Three stars
Virginia Mason Medical Center (Seattle) — Five stars
The CMS star ratings for Leapfrog’s “F” hospitals:
Roseland Community Hospital (Chicago) — One star
Weirton (W.Va.) Medical Center — One star
South Central Regional Medical Center (Laurel, Miss.) — One star
CAMC Teays Valley Hospital (Hurricane, W.Va.) — Unavailable
WVU Fairmont (W.Va.) Medical Center — Unavailable
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