As a state, New Jersey has the third-highest rate (44.8%)of grade A hospitals nationwide, according to The Leapfrog Gorup, the nonprofit health care watchdog. Leapfrog found the highest rate of grade A hospitals in Virginia (56.3%), followed by Utah (57.7%). Overall, 81% of acute care hospitals in New Jersey  scored an A or B, up from 76% last fall. A full list New Jersey hospital grades is here.

The survey, which Leapfrog has released twice a year for more than a decade based on data the hospitals provide, reflects the level of preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections that together kill more than 500 people every day in the United States, according to the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, a nonprofit that works with Leapfrog. Of New Jersey’s 72 acute care hospitals, 67 were graded in the spring survey.

Overall, 13 New Jersey hospitals saw their ranking improve from the November survey, with two of them — Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton and Saint Michael’s Medical Center in Newark — moving from a C to an A grade. The number of hospitals with a C grade declined from 16 to 11, the new survey showed.

Compared to the fall survey, 11 hospitals received lower grades this spring. These include CarePoint Health’s Christ Hospital in Jersey City, which got the only D awarded in this report, down from a C in November, when no New Jersey facilities got the second-lowest grade. CarePoint — which has been struggling financially — also operates a hospital in Bayonne that received Cs on both the fall and spring reports. The system’s Hoboken University Medical Center received a B this time, up from a C in the fall.