COLORADO – Several Colorado hospitals received an A grade in hospital safety, according to new Spring 2019 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group on Wednesday. The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 32 percent earned an A grade, findings that were unchanged from the group’s last round of rankings released in Fall 2018.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries, and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Oregon, Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts, and Utah had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an A grade. Four states — Wyoming, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota — and the District of Columbia did not have a single hospital that received an A grade.

Here are the 16 A-grade Colorado hospitals as ranked by the Leapfrog Group:

For this round of rankings, the Leapfrog Group’s research found that patients at hospitals that receive “D” or “F” grades face a 92 percent greater risk of avoidable death compared to “A” hospitals. At “C” and “B” hospitals, patients on the average face an 88 percent and a 35 percent greater risk respectively.

The group estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at “A” hospitals, 50,000 lives would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016 when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.