A Florida judge has ruled that Leapfrog Group must remove its safety grades dating back to fall 2024 for five Palm Beach County hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp.
Florida Judge Donald Middlebrooks ordered Leapfrog to stop assigning safety grades to Tenet’s five Palm Beach hospitals under the current scoring framework if they choose not to submit their data or otherwise participate in the program in the future. The judge also ordered Leapfrog to withdraw the safety grades for these five hospitals for fall 2024, spring 2025 and fall 2025.
“This ruling validates what hospitals across the country have experienced firsthand: Leapfrog is an organization built on deceptive and unfair practices that harm the very same patients it claims to serve,” said Maggie Gill, Eastern Group president of Palm Beach Health Network
“We brought this lawsuit because patients deserve transparency. Hospitals should no longer be coerced into participating in a rating system or subjected to so-called ‘Safety Grades’ based on made-up data. We hope this decision leads to meaningful changes nationwide, so that hospitals are no longer subjected to Leapfrog’s deceptive grading system and pressure tactics.”
Tenet had sued Leapfrog last year over poor grades given to its Palm Beach Network hospitals, calling the grading process unfair and deceptive. Tenet alleged that the rating organization pressured hospitals to participate in its surveys and pay membership fees, or face poor safety grades. In its complaint, Tenet said the hospitals decided to stop participating in Leapfrog’s surveys and allegedly received worse grades afterward.
Leapfrog publishes A-to-F grades twice a year to help patients assess hospital safety, and says its methodology is open to the public, reviewed by independent experts, and updated annually with input from hospitals and researchers.
The five Tenet hospitals, referred to as Palm Beach Health Network, are Good Samaritan Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach; Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach; Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in Palm Beach Gardens; and West Boca Medical Center in Boca Raton. Two of the hospitals received a “D,” while the other three received a “F” in Leapfrog’s spring survey released April 30, the day the suit was filed. In fall 2025, the most recent round of safety grades, three of the hospitals received a “D,” one received an “F” and one was not graded.
At the center of the dispute is a Leapfrog 2024 policy change that affects hospitals that fail to voluntarily submit safety data. “The result is a system built on inaccurate data and pressure tactics that mislead the public and damage hospitals’ reputations,” Tenet asserted in its legal filings.
The judge agreed and ruled Leapfrog’s methodology was “neither reliable nor defensible,”
After the ruling, Leapfrong Group issued this statement: “We vehemently disagree with this decision, as we believe it threatens the First Amendment rights of every American. We will appeal it immediately.”
Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder says the Florida judge’s ruling has greater implications than just hospital ratings.
“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 for-profit Tenet-owned hospitals care for patients. If this decision was allowed to stand, the implications would seriously undermine all published ratings and reviews in all industries, not just Leapfrog’s ratings of the safety of hospitals. The decision gives businesses in Florida the right to sue ratings organizations if they feel harmed by a rating of their product.”
“While we intend to appeal, we will comply with the injunction in the meantime,” Binder said. “The Spring 2026 update of the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade will continue as planned, with some modifications based on the injunction, which will be shared in the coming days.”
South Florida Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.