Four Idaho Hospitals Earn Top Safety Grades for Spring 2025

Absolutely no one wants to find themselves in the hospital, but sometimes life has other plans. Whether it’s emergency care for something like a broken bone or treatment for a critical illness, if you find yourself being admitted to the hospital, you want to be at one where safety is a major priority.

Is that something you can tell just by walking through the front doors? Probably not, especially if you’re in pain or not feeling well. Luckily, a company called “The Leapfrog Group” has put a lot of time and effort into ranking how well hospitals around the country do when it comes to prioritizing their patient’s safety.

Twice a year, they work together with a panel of medical experts from respected institutions like Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford, UC Davis, Vanderbilt and the CDC to issue a new Hospital Safety Grade.

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They look at a lot of data to determine if the hospital should get an A, B, C, D or F. Some of the factors considered are how often patients end up developing an infection during their stay or following surgery, how often patients experience problems during or as a result of surgery and the prevalence of safety issues like falls, collapsed lungs, and development of dangerous blood clots. Communication between doctors, nurses and patients also play an important role in the final score, as does the staff’s training.

On May 1, 2025, Leapfrog issued updated grades for 14 Idaho hospitals. For the first time in quite a while, NO Idaho hospitals earned a score lower than a C. Five received a C, five received a B and just FOUR received a shiny A grade.

The hospitals at the top of the class for Spring 2025 are:

St. Joseph Regional Medical Center - Lewiston

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St. Joseph performed better than average when it came to keeping their patients safe from problems with surgery, practices to prevent errors and communication/response time of their staff. Leapfrog would like them to step up their game when it comes to surgical wounds reopening, patients experiencing collapsed lungs and handwashing within the hospital. They could also use some additional training for doctors treating ICU patients.

West Valley Medical Center - Caldwell

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There’s some important information missing in the infections category in West Valley’s score, but Leapfrog received enough information to grade them in the other categories. West Valley performs above average when it comes to keeping their patients safe from surgery complications, the number of safety issues like harmful events, dangerous blood clots or air bubbles in the blood. They also scored above average for preventing errors. Leapfrog would like to see them make their leadership more effective in preventing errors, improve their nursing and bedside care for patients and increase the training for doctors working with ICU patients.

St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center - Meridian

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St. Luke’s Meridian out performed the nation’s average score in the problems with surgery, practices to prevent errors and doctors, nurses and hospital staff category. In fact they ranked better than average in every category under doctors, nurses and hospital staff. The things Leapfrog thinks that St. Luke’s Meridian could improve is the number of their patients that end up with urinary tract infections or infections following colon surgery, accidental cuts and tears during surgery, patients who end up with collapsed lungs and handwashing within the facility.

St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center - Boise

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Finally, St. Luke’s Boise also received an A score this spring. They ranked above average in the problems with surgery, safety problems and doctors, nurses and hospital staff categories. They, like their colleagues in Meridian, did exceptionally well in that last one. Leapfrog would like to see them improve in the following areas before the fall scores are released: C. diff infection, accidental cuts and tears during surgery, patients that end up with collapsed lungs and handwashing.