New rankings from LeapFrog put Iowa at 48th in the nation for hospital safety.
The nonprofit that focuses on patient safety looked at 30 Iowa hospitals that had sufficient publicly-available data to rank them on 32 measures of patient safety, including infection rates, surgery problems and staff communication and responsiveness. It's the latest round of the group's semi-annual ratings, which are released in the spring and fall.
Iowa landed at the bottom of its hospital safety list for fall 2025, along with North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. All four states had no hospitals that received an "A" rating.
"That's not a new trend in Iowa. I did look at a few past rounds, and there's been a lack of 'A' safety grades in the state," said Katie Stewart, LeapFrog's director of health care ratings.
Utah earned LeapFrog's top spot for having 17 of the 28 hospitals ranked earn an "A" rating. No Utah hospitals received below a "C" rating.
One Iowa hospital, CHI Health Mercy in Council Bluffs, received a "B" rating. Fifteen hospitals received a "C" rating, 11 received a "D" rating and three received an "F" rating.
The hospitals that received an "F" are: Genesis Medical Center - Davenport, Mercy Medical Center - Cedar Rapids and UnityPoint Health Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge.
Stewart said it often doesn't take a lot of resources for hospitals to improve, adding that change begins with top leadership.
"One of the things that hospitals that are doing well, that do earn those 'A' safety grades, what we know is ... that commitment to patient safety ... has to start at that C-suite level," she said.
Iowans who are concerned about their hospital's ranking should speak to the hospital to see how they are addressing concerns, she said.
"You can drill down and see 'Where do they do well?' and 'Where are they not performing well?'" Stewart said. "And one of the most important takeaways from that is to take that information and really ask your providers, 'What are they doing to improve so they have this safety grade?' Maybe they aren't doing well on the infections. What are they doing to address that?"
