Patient Safety Alert: Ten Texas Hospitals Earn Worst “D” Grade in 2025 Ratings

Needing hospital care is almost always a stressful situation, but we generally trust that every effort has been made to ensure the best health outcome.

However, not all hospitals are equal when it comes to patient safety. How are we supposed to know where not to receive treatment (if we are given the option)?

Read More: Eight Texas Hospitals Lauded As Best In The Nation By Experts

Understanding the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade System

Luckily, there is an independent, nonprofit patient advocacy organization, The Leapfrog Group. From their website:

For more than 20 years, The Leapfrog Group has collected, analyzed, and published hospital data on safety and quality in order to push the health care industry forward.

Read More: Texas Slashes Health Coverage for 1.7 Million—A Looming Crisis

The Leapfrog Group uses several metrics to determine patient safety, and then assigns the hospital an overall letter grade. Their metrics include the following categories:

Infections: how well a hospital prevents the transmission of serious infections like MRSA C. diff, and sepsis inside the hospital and during surgeries/ procedures.

Problems With Surgery: This category looks at problems during and after a surgery, like certain "never" events, e.g., foreign objects being left in the body, blood leakage, and accidental cuts and tears.

Safety Problems: In my opinion, most of this category could also be called "neglect." It looks at things like bedsores, blood clots, collapsed lungs, and patient falls.

Practices to Prevent Errors: This category looks at how a hospital is organized to prevent errors in medication distributions/ prescriptions, handwashing, and communication.

Doctors, Nurses, and Hospital Staff: This category looks at whether there are specialized doctors for ICU patients, if there is effective leadership and how well these folks care for their patients. A lot of this category is bedside manner and administrative.

There are many Texas hospitals with astounding As and impressive B scores.

Most of These Hospitals Also Received Poor Ratings in Previous Years

One would hope that a poor showing one year would lead to serious overhauls to improve patient care, however, seven of these Texas hospitals were "D' performers in Fall of 2024, as well as "D' performers for Spring 2025.

Here's hoping that a streak of poor performance leads to serious changes, as these metrics reflect real people who received "care" that could have threatened their health or even seriously harmed them.

Here is a look at the 10 Texas hospitals that need a serious gut check. For fairness's sake, I also included their Google star ratings, which may either confirm or contradict Leapfrong's analysis.