Jewish Hospital and University of Louisville Hospital downtown again received D grades on a national nonprofit's fall 2018 safety ratings, even though they've made recent efforts to improve the quality of their operations.

Both hospitals failed to raise their scores, with each having earned a D on the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade in the spring of this year as well as in 2017 and 2016. The nonprofit examines and scores hospitals on patient safety issues such as surgical problems and the number of infections that were reported at each facility.

Jewish is owned by KentuckyOne Health, which has been negotiating the potential sale of the hospital for months with a private equity firm. It is home to the city's only adult organ transplant center and provides care for thousands of patients each year, many of whom are critically ill or cannot afford treatment.

The hospital performed below average on some of Leapfrog's metrics, such as those concerning the safe administration of medication and the number of times surgery patients experienced dangerous blood clots. It scored above average in other areas, including on measures related to dangerous bed sores and the number of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections that happened there.

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KentuckyOne used to run U of L Hospital, too, but that changed in the summer of 2017. Now it's overseen by University Medical Center, a U of L affiliate.

U of L performed below average on certain infection-related metrics, including those related to the number of urinary tract infections and MRSA infections. It also performed below average on some surgery-related issues, including dangerous blood clots and deaths from serious treatable complications.

However, U of L was above average on other measures, including the number of dangerous bed sores patients experienced, having specially trained doctors care for patients in an intensive care unit, and having enough qualified nurses on staff.

Since the split from KentuckyOne, U of L Hospital — which serves as a major trauma center and a safety net for poor patients — has hired hundreds of new employees and worked on improving the quality of its care.

Chief Medical Officer Jason Smith told the Courier Journal this summer that Leapfrog isn't the only benchmark the hospital uses and no ratings system is perfect, but he still hoped to see a grade improvement later this year.

That ultimately did not happen, as this week's newly released rankings show.

"Unfortunately, our current Leapfrog grade still reflects a significant period of time when the current administrative team was not responsible for the daily operations at U of L Hospital," Smith said Friday.

Other KentuckyOne-run operations fared better with Leapfrog than Jewish Hospital in downtown Louisville. Jewish Hospital Shelbyville earned a B, and Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital raised its grade from a D to a C.

"Across our facilities in Louisville, and throughout Kentucky, we have several quality, safety and patient satisfaction initiatives in place and underway to continue to improve the quality of care and safety delivered to all our patients," KentuckyOne spokesman David McArthur said.

Other hospitals in the area also got new safety grades from Leapfrog this week.

Across the river in New Albany, Indiana, Baptist Health Floyd raised its grade from a C to a B, although Baptist Health Louisville's score dropped down to a C from spring 2018's B rating.

Norton Hospital and Norton Audubon Hospital in Louisville both got an A, up from the B they scored in spring 2018.

"We know that scores such as those from the Leapfrog Group are important to patients," said Dr. Steven Hester, Norton Healthcare's chief medical officer. "Teams within the Norton Healthcare system use both internal benchmarks and external data from third parties to constantly improve the quality of care we provide our patients."

Here's how some other local hospitals scored on Leapfrog's rankings:

Norton Brownsboro Hospital: B

Norton Women's & Children's Hospital: B

Baptist Health La Grange: C

Clark Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville, Indiana: C

Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown: C

Hardin Memorial Hospital in Elizabethtown: C

Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @morganwatkins26. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/morganw.