Mary Washington, Spotsylvania, Stafford Hospitals Receive Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades
Grades assigned based on scores assigned in five categories: infections; problems with surgery; safety problems; practices to prevent error; doctors, nurses, hospital staff.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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On Wednesday the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization that serves as a voice for health care consumers and purchasers, issued its Spring 2026 safety grades.
Three hospitals in the Fredericksburg region received grades.
Mary Washington Hospital - C
Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center - C
Stafford Hospital - B
The grades are based on 32 evidence-based measures of patient safety that Leapfrog pulls from several sources and assigns a rating of Worse Than Average, Average, or Above Average.
Only Mary Washington Hospital received a grade in all 32 measures, earning ratings of Worst than Average in 13 areas, Average in 9 areas, and Above Average in 10 areas.
To read the full ratings and grades for each hospital, visit Leapfrog’s pages for Mary Washington Hospital, Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, and Stafford Hospital.
Data Concerns
Mary Washington Hospital has since 2023 received grades of C, D, or No Grade from Leapfrog. In an interview with the Advance on Tuesday, the hospital’s Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications, Kendra Gerlach, spoke about some data issues that have had an adverse affect on the hospital’s previous grades.
The problem began in 2023, said Gerlach, who joined Mary Washington Healthcare late in 2025, when “our electronic health record was incorrectly defaulting to include a data element that should have been excluded.”
That data was “automatically transferred to [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services], which is where Leapfrog pulls data for its ratings.” (To learn more about Leapfrog’s data collection and scoring methodology, see here.)
Though improperly transmitted, Gerlach told the Advance, “By the time the issue was known, it was no longer possible to transmit corrected data,” and the hospital must wait for it to roll off of Leapfrog’s data set. That is likely to occur in early 2027, according to Gerlach.
This matters because another body that measures patient safety indicators, Vizient, has according to Gerlach rated the hospital more-favorably. According to a press release issued by Mary Washington Healthcare:
In 2025, Mary Washington Hospital ranked in the top 10 percent in Vizient Safety Domain.
Mary Washington Hospital was best in state in 2025 for Patient Safety Indicators as per Vizient’s data.
The Advance reached out to Vizient for more details. In an emailed response, the company said, “Vizient policy is that we do not comment on specific providers or clients, so I’m unable to confirm or discuss the information referenced regarding Mary Washington.”
Challenging Year for Leapfrog
Leapfrog’s ratings have been challenged this year in Florida. Five Tenet hospitals in Palm Beach County sued Leapfrog accusing it of deception in how it calculates grades. (Read the text of the lawsuit.)
The five hospitals had four years earlier stopped submitting data to Leapfrog. According to the lawsuit, “Until last year, TLG continued to assign grades to Plaintiffs based on how similarly situated participating hospitals performed on standard metrics, and notably, Plaintiffs were never assigned F grades under that system.”
The lawsuit claims that changed in 2024 when under a new policy Leapfrog instituted, “any hospital declining to provide data would automatically fail on the affected metrics.”
A U.S. District Court Judge in the Southern District of Florida sided with the plaintiffs and ordered Leapfrog to remove the grades for the five hospitals bringing suit.
Leapfrog also pulled the ratings for another 445 additional hospitals that also didn’t submit metrics to Leapfrog, according to reporting by MedPageToday.com, and instead labeled them with GNA — Grade Not Assigned.
Leapfrog is appealing this decision.
In a letter dated March 8, Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder called the ruling “a threat to patient safety.” It continued, “We cannot accept the decision’s main conclusion, that Florida citizens—and all Americans—don’t have a right to hear Leapfrog’s expert perspective on how well these five Tenet-owned hospitals care for patients.”
Other Virginia Hospitals
Virginia ranked No. 2 overall in the percentage of hospitals (59.2%) that received a grade of A in Leapfrog’s ratings. Connecticut was first with 64.3% of hospitals receiving As.
Rounding out the Top 10 are South Carolina, Utah, Montana, New Jersey, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina and California.
Within a 50-mile radius of Fredericksburg, Leapfrog assigned grades to 24 hospitals. Of those, 15 received A’s, including UVA Health Culpeper Medical Center.
Find the full list of Virginia hospitals with a Leapfrog score here.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
