Latest news with #LeapfrogGroup
Forbes
11-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Trump, Archimedes Hold Lessons For CMS Hospital, Safety Rules
Archimedes theorized he could use a lever to move the earth, while Donald Trump has advised using ... More leverage to seal deals. Medicare should use its leverage to move hospitals to provide better, safer care. (Photo by) As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services mulls new payment rules for hospitals, its leaders should consult a crucial concept from the book that made Donald Trump famous, then apply it to quality and safety regulations. Also, Archimedes. The concept they have in common is leverage. In The Art of the Deal, then-real-estate-magnate-and-now-president Trump writes, 'Leverage is having something the other guy wants.' It is, he emphasizes, 'the biggest strength you can have.' Since CMS spends over $1 trillion on health care each year, it has the unique leverage of something everyone wants. The agency should apply that leverage in two ways as it finalizes the inpatient prospective payment system draft regulations, whose comment period closed June 10. First, CMS should strengthen requirements that can make care better, safer and more cost-effective. Second, it should move decisively to give patients themselves more direct leverage in the form of actionable information. Approximately one in four hospitalized adults suffers a patient safety problem of some sort, according to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General. Assessing the human impact, the Leapfrog Group has estimated that 160,000 Americans died avoidable deaths in 2018 from only the types of medical errors addressed in its voluntary standards. While there's a wide range of estimates of the financial impact of error, hospital-acquired infections alone are estimated to cost up to $45 billion. CMS has already established a timetable for implementing Patient Safety Structural Measures, but those measures' use could be amended or even eliminated due to objections to its impact on payment that some organizations are still surfacing even in this current rule-making cycle. At first glance, the requirements seem rudimentary. For instance, hospitals must merely 'attest' to elementary actions such as addressing safety topics at governing board meetings and showing a 'leadership commitment to eliminating preventable harm.' Reporting begins this year, though results won't be public until next fall. Hospitals that don't submit data can have their Medicare pay reduced, albeit not until Oct. 1, 2027. Do the feds really need leverage to prompt such basic actions? Unfortunately, a survey by the hospitals' own trade group, the American Hospital Association, found that only 50 percent of hospital boards had quality as one of their priorities. Even more worrisome, 52% of respondent to the 2022 AHRQ Survey of Patient Safety Culture survey said 'hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.' CMS should also demand more, and more useful, hospital transparency. The agency is proposing a couple of steps. It wants inpatient quality data on its Compare website to include data on Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, once a small slice of Medicare but now 54% of all those enrolled. The agency also wants to require cancer hospitals, previously exempt from reporting, to now publicly report quality measures. Comments submitted by Patients for Patient Safety US praised that proposal as a way to 'better support patient and family decision-making about where to seek intensive cancer care.' (Disclosure: I'm a PFPS US member.) But CMS can get patients an even better deal. The Leapfrog Group's comments to CMS called out meaningless transparency (my adjective, not theirs) in which the Compare website data is statistically adjusted so that 90% of hospitals seem no different than the national average. This, the group wrote, 'sends a dangerous message to consumers [that] all hospitals are the same,' even though 'the difference can mean life or death.' In my own comments, I urged CMS to stop displaying data in a complex manner that confuses consumers. I advocated switching instead to a 'radical' transparency based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a framing that resonates emotionally. An actionable framework I developed with Johns Hopkins associate professor Matt Austin mapped common hospital quality measures into three Maslow categories, with a 'drill down' possible via the web for more detail. Those categories were: 'Will I be safe?' (for Maslow, that correlates with the basic need for survival and safety from harm); 'Will I be heard?' (in Maslow's hierarchy, the need for esteem and respect from others); and 'Will I be able to lead my best life?' (self-actualization). Meanwhile, Leapfrog urged CMS to improve data usefulness by reporting results from federal programs using the actual name of the brick-and-mortar hospital, not its CMS Certification Number. I've urged something similar in regard to Medicare Advantage star ratings,, which aren't part of the current regulatory draft. Right now, star ratings of health plan quality aren't based on what a local plan does, which most consumers would assume, but on the CMS plan contract number, which at times applies to plans located across the entire country. Leapfrog also advocated eliminating the exemption from public reporting that, in addition to cancer hospitals, applies to critical access hospitals, pediatric hospitals, hospitals in U.S. territories and other facilities. Every patient, Leapfrog wrote, deserves 'the same safety, quality and resource use information.' Separately, Patients for Patient Safety urged CMS to fix a 'foundational flaw' undermining accurate patient safety data by providing patients with what amounts to a powerful lever. Current error reporting relies on hospitals self-reproting; that has resulted in only about 5% of harm being reported, according to research cited by Patients for Patient Safety . Patients 'notice things others miss,' Patients for Patient Safety pointed out, yet 'we are systematically excluded from harm reporting systems.' The group called for CMS to empower patients and families to directly report harm. As I noted in a previous Forbes column, two goals CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz immediately set out when he took office were 'empowering the American people' to better manage their health and holding providers 'accountable for health outcomes.' The quality and safety rules supported by activists represent a golden opportunity to take giant steps in that direction. Finally, there's Archimdes. The ancient Greek mathematician famously said of leverage, 'Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.' By comparison, CMS has only to use the powerful leverage of its quality and safety regulations to move the American health care system. As President Trump described leverage in his book, 'Don't do deals without it.'
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What grade did North Ala. hospitals receive from the Leapfrog Hospital Safety report?
NORTH ALABAMA (WHNT) — North Alabama hospitals received grades ranging from an A to two Fs. The Leapfrog Group is an independent national nonprofit focused on patient safety. On May 1, the group released its grade reports for hospitals across the nation for Spring 2025. The report card is like a school grade scale: A, B, C, D and F. These grades are 'assigned to all general hospitals in the United States based on their ability to protect patients from medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections,' the Leapfrog Group said. Hospitals receive a score in multiple categories within the following sections: Infections, Problems with Surgery, Safety Problems, Practices to Prevent Errors and Doctors, Nurses & Hospital Staff. Each section can have up to seven different categories that can be given a performance score of Worse than Average, Average and Better than Average, which plays into the overall hospital grade. Disclaimer: The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade scores hospitals on their overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. The grades are derived from expert analysis of publicly available data using up to 31 evidence-based, national measures of hospital safety. In the list, 13 North Alabama hospitals were graded, receiving a grade anywhere from A to F. But, which hospital received what grade? Find out in the list below! Based on the data, Helen Keller Hospital is overall considered worse than average in the section titled 'Practices to Prevent Errors.' Specifically, handwashing, safe medication administration, and doctors' orders medications through the computer were in the red zone. That being said, the 'Safety Problems' section, most of the reports from the data suggest the hospital is better than average. For this section, there were seven categories that the hospital was rated on. Five of the seven were labeled as better than average, while one was labeled as average and one was labeled as below average. In previous years, Helen Keller Hospital received a relatively similar score, receiving a C for both Fall and Spring 2024, and a D for Fall 2023 and a C for Spring 2023. Based on data collected from Leapfrog, the Shoals Hospital received a C for its Spring 2025 grade. While this seems bad, the data collected from Leapfrog isn't complete. Out of 32 categories to grade the hospital on, only 14 of the categories are given a performance level. Seven of those 14 rated categories scored better than average, showing up the most in the 'Practices to Prevent Errors' section. The 18 other categories that were not given a performance level were labeled as 'not available.' Based on Leapfrog's website, ''Not Available' means that the hospital does not have data for this measure. This could be because the measure is related to a service the hospital does not provide. For example, a hospital that does not have an ICU would not be able to report data about ICUs. It could also be because the hospital had too few patients or cases to report data for a particular condition or procedure. A 'Not Available' result does not mean that the hospital withheld information from the public,' the group said. The hospital, based on previous reports, has been all over the grade scale. In 2022, the hospital received an F for the Spring but a B for the Fall. In 2023, Shoals Hospital received a C for the Spring but a D for the Fall. For 2024, the hospital received a C for the entire year. DeKalb Regional Medical Center was the ONLY North Alabama hospital to receive an A on its Spring 2025 report card. 14 of the categories were rated as better than average, with the best section being the 'Doctors, Nurses & Hospital Staff.' A point of concern seemed to stem from the 'Problems with Surgery' section, where only one of the seven categories was rated as better than average. The rest were considered average, with one category labeled as worse than average. Still, the hospital received a 0.00 score for this section. The best hospital's score was graded as 0.00, with the worst being 0.327 and the average being 0.014. In years past, DeKalb Regional Medical Center has been consistent in its scoring. In 2024, it received A's across the board for the year. In 2023, the hospital received a C for the Spring but an A for the Fall. The Russellville Hospital received a C based on the data collected from Leapfrog, mainly due to the 'Practices to Prevent Errors' section. In this section, four of the six categories are labeled as worse than average, with communication about discharge labeled as average and the staff work together to prevent errors category blank because the hospital declined to report this information to the public. The best section for the hospital could be considered as the 'Problems with Surgery' section, as four of the seven categories were given a performance score. Two of these categories received an average performance grade, while one received a better-than-average performance score and one received a worse-than-average performance score. The Russellville Hospital, based on data from years past, seems to stay consistent with either a B or a C grade. In 2024, the hospital received a B for the Spring but a C for the Fall, similarly to 2023, where the Spring grade was a C but the Fall grade was a B. Highlands Medical Center seemed to struggle in the 'Practices to Prevent Errors' section of the grading because four of the five categories given a performance score were considered worse than average. The hospital received a score of 15 for this section, simply because the Leapfrog data said the hospital declined to report its performance on this measure, so a score was assigned to reflect the lack of information available. The highest hospital score for this section was a 100, with the average hospital receiving an 80.23 score. The hospital performed its best in the 'Problems with Surgery' category, receiving an average performance score from four of the five scored categories. This grade is an improvement for the hospital, according to Leapfrog data. This is the first time the hospital has received a C since Spring 2022. After that, the hospital has continuously received a D on its report card until now. The North Alabama Medical Center was one of two North Alabama hospitals that received this grade. For the sections that Leapfrog graded on, the 'Infections' section was given the best performance score. Six of the six categories in this section received a better-than-average performance score. The hospital received a 0.00 score, with the highest hospital's score being a 0.00. The average hospital's score was 0.719, and the hospital with the worst score in this section received a 2.850. The section where this hospital could work on more is 'Safety Problems.' Seven categories were given a performance score. Two were scored as worse than average and four were given an average performance score. In recent years, the hospital received a B for 2024, and Cs for both 2023 and 2022. The area for improvement for the Athens-Limestone Hospital is 'Safety Problems.' Of the seven categories, four were given an average performance score and two were given a worse-than-average score. The hospital received an overall 1.00 score for this section. The hospital with the best score received a 0.53, the worst score was a 3.10 and the average hospital received a 1.00 score. The Athens-Limestone Hospital scored the best in the 'Infections' section. Its overall score was 0.00, with the best score for a hospital being 0.00. The hospital with the worst score received a 2.850, and the average hospital score was 0.719. For 2024, the hospital received a D for the Spring and a C for the Fall. For 2023 as a whole, it received a C. Crestwood Medical Center, while receiving worse-than-average performance scores in the 'Doctors, Nurses & Hospital Staff' section, the hospital received better overall scores for the section. Five of the six categories in this section were in the red and one category was rated as average. However, the hospital's score was a 101.54 overall score, with the best hospital's score being 120.00. The hospital with the worst score received a 9.23 and the average hospital received a 117.49 score. The hospital had the best overall performance score in the 'Problems with Surgery' section. Out of the seven categories, two were considered better than average, four were considered average and one was worse than average. The grade of a C is a step up from the most recent grade for 2024, being a D for Fall and a C for Spring. Huntsville Hospital was one of the two lowest-ranking hospitals in North Alabama. The hospital's worst-scoring section was 'Practices to Prevent Errors.' Its overall score was 15, according to Leapfrog. This is because the hospital reportedly declined to report its performance on this section, so Leapfrog assigned the hospital a score to reflect the lack of information available. Five of the six categories in this section were scored. Three of the five categories were scored worse than average while the other two were scored as average. The hospital had the best section in 'Problems with Surgery.' While the performance scores appear to be low, the overall score provided by Leapfrog shows the hospital scored the same as the best hospital's score: 0.00. The average hospital score was 0.014 and the worst hospital scored 0.327. This grade is one step down from 2024, with a grade of D. In both 2023 and 2022, Huntsville Hospital receied a C grade. Madison Hospital was the other hospital in North Alabama to receive the lowest grade. The hospital received almost identical performance and overall scores to Huntsville Hospital. The hospital's worst-scoring section was 'Practices to Prevent Errors.' Its overall score was 15, according to Leapfrog. The average score for this section was 80.23, with the highest score being 100. Madison Hospital's best-scoring section was also 'Problems with Surgery.' While the performance scores appear to be low, the overall score provided by Leapfrog shows the hospital scored the same as the best hospital's score: 0.00. In 2024, the hospital also received a D for the year, which was a small step down from 2023. This year, the hospital received a C grade for the Spring and a D grade for the Fall. Marshall Medical Center North was the only North Alabama hospital to receive a D grade. Based on available Leapfrog data, the hospital received the worst performance scores for the 'Infections' section. Its overall score was 2.452. The best score was 0.00, the worst was 2.850 and the average score was 0.719. The hospital's best scoring section was 'Problems with Surgery.' Three of the seven sections are scored as better than average, two are average and two are scored as worse than average. This grade is consistent with previous Leapfrog data. For 2024, the Marshall Medical Center North received a D for the Spring and a C for the Fall. However, for both 2023 and 2022, the hospital received a D grade. The Decatur-Morgan Hospital-Decatur Campus had four of the five sections scoring in the nationwide best hospital's score: 'Infections,' 0.00; 'Problems with Surgery,' 0.00; 'Practices to Prevent Errors,' 100; 'Doctors, Nurses & Hospital Staff,' 120. The worst section, scored for the hospital, was 'Safety Problems.' In this section, the hospital received an overall score of 1.17. The best hospital scored a 0.53, with the worst hospital scoring a 3.10. This grade is consistent with previous years, considering 2024's yearly score was a B. In 2023, the hospital scored a C for the Spring, and the grade for the Fall was a B. You can find out all the hospitals in Alabama or nationwide that were given a grade on the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade website here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Medscape
28-05-2025
- Business
- Medscape
Five Florida Hospitals Sue Safety Ratings System
Five Tenet Healthcare hospitals are suing a leading provider of hospital safety ratings in federal court, alleging that it 'pressures hospitals to participate and pay or else suffer devastating and misleading public 'safety' grades.' The South Florida hospitals all got 'D' or 'F' grades in the fall 2024 ratings from Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Grade website after they declined to answer the company's surveys. The hospitals also received poor overall and patient-satisfaction ratings from Medicare. Leah Binder, Leapfrog's president and CEO, told Medscape Medical News that the nonprofit organization stands by its ratings. 'The Tenet Healthcare system has disgraceful performance on patient safety,' she said, 'and that is what they should be spending their money to address.' The legal battle pits Tenet Healthcare, which made a net $20.7 billion in revenue last year, against a nonprofit with a recent annual revenue of just $7.6 million but significant influence over hospital reputations. Methodology Under Fire At issue: Should hospitals be punished when they decline to provide data for Leapfrog's safety ratings? Until recently, Leapfrog gave average scores on several measures to hospitals that refused to respond to surveys. The organization changed course as of the fall 2024 ratings and now automatically gives the lowest rating possible to nonparticipating hospitals on four of 30 measures — Computerized Physician Order Entry, Bar Code Medication Administration, Intensive Care Unit Physician Staffing, and Hand Hygiene Score. As a result, nonparticipating hospitals get worse safety ratings because their scores on these measures count toward their overall letter grades. Among the five hospitals that are suing, Good Samaritan (West Palm Beach), Delray (Delray Beach), and Palm Beach Gardens got 'F' grades. West Boca (Boca Raton) and St. Mary's (West Palm Beach) got 'D' grades. The lawsuit, filed on April 30, said the hospital stopped responding to Leapfrog's 'excessive' data requests in 2021. The hospitals contended Leapfrog 'relies on invented data for some hospitals but not others.' The lowest-possible rating (15/100) for handwashing at the Delray hospital, for example, is 'deceptively communicating to consumers that Delray Medical Center doctors and nurses don't adequately wash their hands, among other false statements — with no data whatsoever to support that conclusion.' Binder defended the change in methodology. 'We continuously received complaints from hundreds of hospitals that do report to the survey,' she said. An expert panel recommended a move toward standardized low scores for nonparticipating hospitals, she said, and Leapfrog changed its methodology. Ratings System Says It's Being Transparent Binder said Leapfrog, founded 25 years ago by employers and others seeking better hospital safety information, is open about its data and methods. Leapfrog uses patient satisfaction survey data that are used, in part, to determine physician compensation, raises, and bonuses. 'It's pretty easy for us to defend the responsibility with which Leapfrog issues these grades,' Binder said. 'Even if, for some reason, we felt like we wanted to show bias towards some hospital or against another hospital, it would be really hard to do that when we're putting the entire methodology out there.' According to Leapfrog, refusing to participate in the company's surveys isn't a ticket to a poor grade. About 20% of 2829 hospitals rated in the Spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grades report didn't respond to surveys, the company said in response to queries from Medscape Medical News . Among those, six got an 'A,' 20 got a 'B,' 380 got a 'C,' 167 got a 'D,' and 19 got an 'F.' Leapfrog described its methodology regarding the four measures in small print at the bottom of webpages that report individual hospital safety grades. See, for example, the Palm Beach Gardens hospital's ' handwashing' page on the Hospital Safety Grade website. 'I don't think it's that fine of print,' Binder said. 'If you're digging into it, you're going to see that we make it clear.' 'Self-Reported, Biased, and Subject to Manipulation' The lawsuit also claims that data provided by participating hospitals 'is self-reported, biased, and subject to manipulation.' Binder responded that self-reported data goes through an 'intensive verification process,' including on-site verifications at randomly selected hospitals each year. However, a 2019 New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst report noted that 'Leapfrog leadership stated that they had only done a formal audit for approximately five hospitals of about 2600 in the past year, and only 72 hospitals underwent an electronic audit.' The rate-the-raters report graded hospital quality ratings systems and gave a C to the Medicare system and a C-minus to Leapfrog. The US News & World Report grading system received a B, and Healthgrades got a D-minus. In the new lawsuits, the 5 hospitals also claim that Leapfrog 'has used the tens of millions of dollars of revenue it has collected from participating hospitals and other sponsors in its pay-to-play system to pay exorbitant salaries to its owner and executives. Between 2019 and 2023, [Leapfrog] has paid over 3 million dollars in salary and benefits to Leah Binder — its CEO.' 'Hospitals, researchers, and businesses can license Leapfrog data for a fee. This has no influence on ratings…,' Leapfrog said in a statement. The CEO of Tenet Healthcare, the owner of the five hospitals that are suing, made $24.7 million in compensation in 2024, according to Becker's Hospital Review. Hospitals Tout Performance but Ignore Federal Ratings The lawsuit described the five South Florida hospitals as award-winning and 'high-performing' with 'reputations for being high-quality healthcare systems that put patient care first.' However, the lawsuit failed to mention that the hospitals all received low scores from Medicare's hospital comparison tool. On a 5-star scale, Good Samaritan and St. Mary's have 1-star overall and patient-satisfaction ratings. Palm Beach Gardens has 1- and 2-star ratings on the measures, respectively, while West Boca and Delray have 2- and 1-star ratings, respectively. Their scores are 'among the worst in the country,' Binder said. 'They are performing extremely poorly in the eyes of their own patients.' The hospitals declined to speak on the record about the lawsuit or answer questions regarding their poor ratings under Medicare's grading system. In a statement to Medscape Medical News , they said, 'our hospitals are continuously working to improve the patient experience and have been recognized repeatedly for our leadership in quality, innovation, and compassionate care.' Legal Expert: Facts, Not Grades, Are Key How vulnerable is Leapfrog in court? Eric Goldman, JD, MBA, a professor at California's Santa Clara University School of Law, Santa Clara, California, who has studied online rating systems, said this case is different than a filmmaker suing a movie critic over a bad review. 'When it comes to something like hospitals, the consequences [of ratings] are much higher,' he told Medscape Medical News . 'You watch a bad movie, you lose 20 bucks and 2 hours of your time. You go to the wrong hospital, you might be dead.' Goldman suggested the legal issue isn't the grades themselves — which are opinion and therefore protected under the First Amendment — but whether Leapfrog is following its own rules. 'The legal question is whether, by stating a methodology and then failing to follow it, Leapfrog is publishing false information,' he said. 'What's made it false isn't their grade but the fact that the grade is a product of reliance upon inaccurate data or the failure to process that data in accordance with their stated policies.' He elaborated, 'I don't think that if Leapfrog assigns a hospital an 'F' that it would have the basis to sue. It might not be a credible grade, but it's still not actionable. But if they're reporting that the hospitals are not performing on certain criteria, that's the potential fact claim that could be the basis of a lawsuit.' According to Goldman, Leapfrog's strongest defense may be the market itself. 'Leapfrog is absolutely free to assign a grade however it wants. That is its prerogative, and that's constitutionally protected as an opinion,' he said. 'Ultimately, the market decides how credible they find Leapfrog's methodology. If people find it credible, they continue to use it. If they don't, they're not required to.'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill disputes report labeling it as South Carolina's worst hospital
Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill is disputing a report that labeled it as the worst hospital in the state of South Carolina. Our partners at the Rock Hill Herald first shared a new report from The Leapfrog Group that gave the facility a 'D' rating. The national non-profit says it based that rating on how well PMC prevented medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections. The hospital pushed back against those findings, releasing a statement that said, in part, 'Leapfrog's scoring system deceives patients and rewards hospitals that either pay them or supply free data for their flawed survey.' Fifteen other hospitals in the state received a 'C' grade from Leapfrog. (VIDEO: Rock Hill student charged after tap on classmate's head)
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mon Medical Center earns A in Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade
May 2—dbeard @ MORGANTOWN — Vandalia Health Mon Medical Center earned an A in Leapfrog's Hospital Safety Grade spring 2025 report. This is Mon Health's first A since 2019 — improving from a B in fall 2024 and a C in spring 2024. The Leapfrog Group is a safety-based nonprofit formed by major employers and health care groups and issues its safety grades twice a year, in spring and fall. Mon Medical Center was the only West Virginia hospital to receive an A in the spring grading. The Leapfrog Group assigns a letter grade to nearly 3, 000 general hospitals on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections. David Goldberg, president and CEO of Mon Health System and Davis Health System — Vandalia Health Northern Region, and executive vice president of Vandalia Health, said, "Our mission every day is personalized care. It's every patient, every time, one patient at a time. And that's what this is about. While it ebbs and flows — the letter score — what doesn't ebb and flow is our dedication to being 100 % focused on the need of a patient each and every time." Mon Medical Center scored an A grade in fall 2019, B in spring 2020, C in fall 2020, A in spring 2021, Bs in fall 2021 and both times in 2022, fell to a C in spring 2023, and B in fall 2023. This spring, the hospital scored above average for infections, problems with surgery, error prevention and staff training and practices. It achieved the best overall score for infections and staffing. For safety problems, it scored a hair below the national average score of 1.00, with a 1.07. The best score was 0.53 and the worst was 3.10. It scored above average in three of seven categories in this area. Goldberg said Leapfrog data runs 12-18 months behind. "We've been on a journey to improve, and we've seen significant reductions in infection rates, falls, hospital-acquired conditions. We've also bolstered so much in our intensive care unit, with dedicated intensivists." Patient experience scores continue to be in the top 10 % to 25 %, he said, and patient safety scores continue to rank high. "We're thrilled to be an A, " he said. "But what that really goes to show and what it continues to show is that Mon Health Medical Center continues to lead with quality, safety and service."
