This paper examines the Leapfrog Group, a voluntary national healthcare quality initiative that tracks hospital safety, quality, and affordability. It outlines the organization's founding rationale — rooted in a landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report on preventable medical errors — its publicly available patient safety data, and its advocacy for evidence-based practices such as computerized physician order entry and ICU staffing standards. The paper also discusses Leapfrog's future monitoring commitments, including five key clinical conditions used as bellwethers of hospital performance, and the broader significance of Leapfrog ratings for hospital administrators, insurers, and healthcare consumers.
The Leapfrog Group is a national healthcare quality initiative whose stated aim is to track the "safety, quality and affordability of health care" (Mission, 2012, Leapfrog). It is designed to help consumers make more informed healthcare decisions. The organization "rewards" high-performing hospitals with strong ratings and, conversely, penalizes poorly-performing institutions with weak ratings — or notes their failure to report data at all (Mission, 2012, Leapfrog). Participation is voluntary, but there is a strong incentive to participate because of Leapfrog's reputation as a gold standard of patient care measurement.
Leapfrog's mission was solidified by a landmark 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, which found that 98,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors (Mission, 2012, Leapfrog). The Leapfrog Group was founded in 2000 and today encompasses over 65 employers and agencies "that purchase care for more than 34 million people" (Jha et al., 2008). In 2009, 1,206 hospitals across the country completed the Leapfrog Hospital Survey.
Leapfrog makes its patient safety data publicly available, enabling all healthcare consumers to monitor safety practices at the institutions they frequent — or, at minimum, to note if a given institution has refused to disclose data. "Of the 1,860 hospitals targeted by Leapfrog, 790 chose not to disclose their patient safety activities, and 1,070 were willing to report their activities publicly" (Jha et al., 2008).
"CPOE, ICU staffing, and mortality outcome evidence"
"Five clinical bellwether conditions and rating incentives"
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