Why some Belleville-area hospitals are missing from new safety reports
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- Leapfrog designated several metro-east hospitals "Grade Not Assigned" in its spring cycle.
- Leapfrog applied a new no-grade policy after a court ruling involving 5 Florida hospitals.
- Leapfrog omitted grades for hospitals that didn’t participate in its 2024 or 2025 surveys.
National nonprofit organization The Leapfrog Group releases hospital safety grades for nearly 3,000 facilities twice each year, but this spring, updated grades are unavailable for most hospitals in the metro-east.
Leapfrog designated Memorial Hospital Belleville, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and HSHS St. Joseph’s in Breese, Anderson Hospital and SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia “Grade Not Assigned” in its latest grading cycle, released May 6.
The local hospitals were among 450 across the nation for which grades were not assigned, and represent facilities that did not participate in Leapfrog’s 2024 or 2025 voluntary surveys.
Previously, Leapfrog graded hospitals regardless of their participation in the organization’s survey, as long as sufficient data was otherwise available. However, a federal judge issued a March ruling in a lawsuit by Tenet Healthcare in South Florida requiring Leapfrog to remove its online safety grades for five Tenet Healthcare hospitals due to an “unfair and deceptive” grading process.
Details of the Leapfrog court ruling
In the March 6 court filing, the South Florida plaintiff hospitals cited a recent change in Leapfrog’s grading process that assigned the lowest score in areas relying on self-reporting when the hospital declines to report.
“Put simply, the alternative scoring measures became punishing,” the lawsuit read.
Leapfrog officials wrote in a March 8 press release the court ruling was a “threat to patient safety.”
“Leapfrog is the most transparent ratings system anywhere in the country, with every element of its methodology made public and accessible to a lay audience, with nothing hidden from the public as proprietary or otherwise unavailable,” Leapfrog’s statement read. “If Leapfrog’s gold-standard transparency is considered ‘deceptive’ in Florida, no ratings system is safe from court intervention.”
The five Tenet Healthcare hospitals involved in the suit received 3 “F” grades and 2 “D” grades in the spring 2025 cycle, according to Leapfrog.
The court ruling only affected Leapfrog grades for the five hospitals involved in the lawsuit, but the organization opted to universally apply the new rule of not grading hospitals that don’t participate in the survey.
“The safety grade is a national program, so we do not apply programmatic changes just to individual hospitals,” Katie Stewart, director of healthcare ratings at The Leapfrog Group, told the News-Democrat in a recent interview.
Leapfrog is pursuing an appeal against the federal court ruling and reviewing its methodology.
Previous Leapfrog controversies
This wasn’t the first lawsuit posed by a healthcare company against Leapfrog – Chicago-based Saint Anthony Hospital sued the Leapfrog Group in 2017 over a grade they called “inaccurate.” They filed the lawsuit the day before the grade was published (hospital officials receive them in advance of public release) and Leapfrog officials agreed not to publish it, though they said publishing the grade would not have constituted a false statement.
A Cook County Circuit Clerk Judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2018, Becker’s Hospital Review reported.
Additionally, Florida-based NCH Healthcare System sued Leapfrog in 2019 to try to prevent the organization from publishing their “D” grade, saying they didn’t participate in the voluntary survey and received a low grade as a result. The hospital system ended up dropping the lawsuit.
Leapfrog’s full grading methodology is available online and is peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.
One metro-east hospital receives ‘A’ grade
While several St. Louis region hospitals do not tend to participate in Leapfrog’s voluntary self-reporting survey, OSF Saint Anthony’s Health Center in Alton regularly participates.
OSF Saint Anthony’s received its fifth consecutive “A” grade from Leapfrog in the spring 2026 cycle.
“We take the Leapfrog Survey to demonstrate transparency, benchmark quality, and drive patient safety improvements. The survey directly informs the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, which allows hospitals to showcase superior patient care, attract patients, and validate their safety initiatives to the public,” OSF Healthcare manager of quality and safety Melissa Poletti wrote in an emailed statement to the News-Democrat.
The hospital scored above-average overall, but received below-average scores for a few categories, including blood leakage, kidney injury after surgery and harmful events.
“Earning five consecutive “A” grades highlights the hospital’s unwavering commitment to patient safety,” interim president Lisa Schepers said in a May 6 press release.
The News-Democrat contacted staff with several local hospitals to ask about their decision to decline to participate in Leapfrog’s survey, as well as other options for evaluating safety at each facility. Here’s what they said.
Anderson Hospital
“Anderson Hospital participates in reporting quality information, so it is available to the public. It’s important to note that there are many different reporting agencies, each with their own methodologies and criteria for evaluating hospitals,” Natalie Head, spokesperson for Anderson Hospital, wrote in a May 7 emailed statement to the News-Democrat.
“We encourage individuals to consider multiple sources when evaluating our performance. Anderson Hospital completed its triennial accreditation with the Joint Commission in 2024, which is the gold standard of accreditation.
“We are proud to share that Anderson Hospital continues to be recognized for delivering exceptional care and outstanding outcomes. In 2025, the Gateway Business Health Coalition honored our organization for achieving both high quality and low cost—a reflection of our ongoing commitment to providing value-based care to our community.
“We recently celebrated the fifth consecutive year of being recognized by Newsweek as one of the Worlds Best Hospitals. This recognition places Anderson Hospital among the top 4% of hospitals in the United States. In addition, we’ve been recognized by Healthgrades in 4 different categories for 2026. Visit us here to find out more: https://andersonhospital.org/award-winning-care/”
In the fall 2025 Leapfrog hospital safety grades, Anderson Hospital received a C.
BJC Health
Memorial Hospital Belleville and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis are both part of the BJC Health system.
“BJC Health is committed to patient safety as one of our core values. We support efforts to make quality outcomes data available to patients and to the public. We encourage people to seek out data on Medicare’s Care Compare site. We are committed to transparency by providing links to this information on the BJC website,” Laura High, spokesperson for BJC Health, wrote in an emailed statement to the News-Democrat.
“The Leapfrog analysis is based on a methodology that is a composite of process and outcome measures for which most of the process data is obtained from hospitals’ responses to a self-reported survey. We have concerns about relying on methodologies that utilize self-reporting on questionnaires, particularly those such as Leapfrog’s survey in which the self-reported data carries a significant impact in the overall results. For these reasons, BJC Health hospitals have never participated in the Leapfrog survey.
“We believe our approach – based on methodical study and careful ongoing evaluation of outcomes – is a more effective means of improving patient safety and that our rigorous discipline and process over the years has made a significant impact on improving quality of care. All BJC hospitals are committed to providing the highest standard of care every day for every patient.”
In the fall 2025 Leapfrog hospital safety grades, Memorial Hospital Belleville and Barnes-Jewish Hospital each received a C.
HSHS
“Following a federal court ruling in Florida that required Leapfrog to remove its safety grades because they unfairly penalized non-participating hospitals and misrepresented hospital safety, Leapfrog has removed grades for all hospitals that did not recently complete its voluntary survey — including HSHS hospitals,” HSHS spokesperson Kelly Barbeau wrote in an emailed statement.
“We remain deeply committed to quality and transparency. Our performance is measured continuously through CMS standardized reporting, real-time clinical data, and rigorous internal review. We are proud of the care we provide and the outcomes we achieve for the patients we serve.”
In the fall 2025 Leapfrog hospital safety grades, HSHS St. Elizabeth’s and HSHS St. Joseph’s in Breese each received a C.
The News-Democrat also contacted staff with SSM Health. In the fall 2025 Leapfrog grades, SSM Health St. Mary’s in Centralia received a C.
How can you evaluate local hospitals when safety grades are unavailable?
Although updated Leapfrog grades are not currently available for much of the metro-east, there are several other options patients have to evaluate hospitals for planned care.
Additional resources include U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. News & World Report, Healthgrades and the Illinois Hospital Report Card.
National trends in the latest safety grades
Nationally, the hospitals that were graded this spring generally saw improvements in 17 measures compared to recent years’ performances, Leapfrog reported, including healthcare-associated infections.
“What we are seeing is really promising,” Stewart said.
MRSA infections have seen a 42% decline since the fall 2022 grades, according to Leapfrog, and C. diff infections are down 30%.
Medication errors also saw a significant improvement, Stewart said, and patient experience measures improved slightly.
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