WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — A federal judge in West Palm Beach has ruled that The Leapfrog Group’s safety grades for five Palm Beach County hospitals were “unfair and deceptive,” ordering the national ratings organization to remove those grades and stop issuing new ones under its current methodology.
The decision follows a lawsuit filed by Palm Beach Health Network, which operates five Tenet-owned hospitals in the county. The hospitals argued that Leapfrog unfairly penalized them after they chose not to complete Leapfrog’s voluntary safety survey.
Leapfrog assigns hospitals letter grades — from “A” to “F” — based on safety data. But in a 41-page ruling, the judge found that the way Leapfrog calculated grades for non-participating hospitals was flawed and punitive…