The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit health care ratings organization, today released new Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, awarding A’s to every eligible legacy St. Luke’s acute care hospital.

The 11 campuses – Bethlehem, Allentown, Anderson, Carbon, Easton, Monroe, Miners, Sacred Heart, Upper Bucks and Warren, as well as Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital – were among a select group of hospitals across the nation awarded an A for their commitment to keeping patients safe and meeting the highest safety standards in the nation.

“You know St. Luke’s is truly awesome because everyone is saying it,” said Donna Sabol, St. Luke’s Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer. “This month it’s Leapfrog giving St. Luke’s A grades. Last month it was the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which ranked St. Luke’s the #1 health system in the country for quality and safety, ahead of the nationally renowned institutions Houston Methodist and the Mayo Clinic, which rounded out the top three.”

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade assigns letter grades of A, B, C, D and F twice annually – in the spring and fall – to hospitals nationwide based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections and other harms.

St. Luke’s Grand View, which joined St. Luke’s in July, received a B grade.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is the only rating solely focused on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections. Developed under the guidance of a panel of national experts, it uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals.

“Preventable deaths and harm in hospitals have been a major policy concern for decades,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “Significant variation in performance remains across U.S. hospitals. … All hospitals are not the same.”

In September, the federal AHRQ recognized St. Luke’s alongside national heavyweights Houston Methodist and the Mayo Clinic as the nation’s three high performing health systems for safety and quality, one of three health care systems in the country with multiple hospitals demonstrating the high levels of quality and safety performance. Of the three, St. Luke’s was ranked #1.

St Luke’s high marks from Leapfrog echo the assessment in August by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS).

In its annual quality and safety hospital review, CMS awarded St. Luke’s hospitals the highest possible quality rating of five stars. St. Luke’s was the only health network in the Lehigh Valley to receive five-star ratings.

Nationwide, an elite 8 percent of 4,658 eligible hospitals earned five stars.

“Straight A’s and five stars – St. Luke’s is the only health network in Lehigh Valley to ever receive such high marks from both CMS and Leapfrog,” Sabol noted, “and that is a fact.”

 

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.

The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 50+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 500+ residents and fellows.

St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A’s from Leapfrog across all of its 11 acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.

 

Information provided to TVL by:
Gary R. Blockus