Michigan has moved up in state rankings in an annual patient safety report, with 24 of its hospitals getting an "A" from the independent Leapfrog Group.
The report collects and scores data on dangerous incidents that happen in hospitals like frequency of patient falls, hospital acquired infections, and objects left in patients' bodies after surgery.
But Detroit Medical Center now has three of its hospitals getting a failing grade, up from two last year. DMC-Sinai Grace, DMC-Harper University, and DMC-Detroit Receiving were given an "F" in the 2025 report.
DMC pushed back against the bad grades in a statement, referencing a lawsuit filed yesterday by a group of Florida hospitals against the Leapfrog Group.
"We stand with our sister hospitals, which earlier this week filed a complaint in Florida against The Leapfrog Group’s inaccurate, corrupt and dangerous rankings. Leapfrog’s scoring system deceives patients and rewards hospitals that either pay them or supply free data for their flawed [hospital] survey, while punishing those that do not participate with inaccurate scores based on fabricated data," DMC said.
"We are constantly working to improve patient safety and quality care but these false ratings undermine the doctor-hospital-patient relationship that is essential to positive health outcomes. For these reasons, among others, we, along with more than 20% of hospitals nationally, also refuse to participate in the voluntary survey. We applaud our sister hospitals ’ efforts to protect patients and ensure that they have access to accurate, reliable information when making decisions about their care," the statement continued.
Leapfrog said its Hospital Survey is an annual voluntary survey in which it asks hospitals to report quality and safety data and then publicly reports that information by hospital.
The group said the Safety Grade is a letter grade Leapfrog bi-annually assigns to all general hospitals in the United States, whether they report to the Survey or not. If a hospital does not report to the Survey, the Safety Grade uses publicly available data from numerous secondary sources. The majority of data used to calculate the Safety Grade comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Leapfrog said.
Leapfrog said it stands by its reports, and said the lawsuit is an attempt to suppress critical information meant to help patients.
