Leaps in Hospital Quality, Safety and Affordability
Through the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey, Leapfrog rates hospitals across the country on a range of quality and safety practices that should be employed by all hospitals. Leapfrog ratings are posted on our website and are free to the public. Endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF), the practices are:
1. Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE): With CPOE systems, hospital staff enter medication orders via computers linked to software designed to prevent prescribing errors. CPOE has been shown to reduce serious prescribing errors by more than 50%.
2. Evidence-Based Hospital Referral (EHR): Consumers and health care purchasers should choose hospitals with the best track records. By referring patients needing certain complex medical procedures to hospitals offering the best survival odds based on scientifically valid criteria — such as the number of times a hospital performs a procedure each year or other process or outcomes data — studies indicate that a patient’s risk of dying could be significantly reduced.
3. ICU Physician Staffing (IPS): Staffing ICUs with intensivists – doctors who have special training in critical care medicine – has been shown to reduce the risk of patients dying in the ICU by 40%.
4. Leapfrog Safe Practices Score: The National Quality Forum-endorsed Safe Practices cover a range of practices that, if utilized, would reduce the risk of harm in certain processes, systems or environments of care.
Included in the 34 practices are the three leaps above. This fourth leap assesses a hospitals’ progress on 17 of the remaining 31 NQF safe practices.
These leaps adhere to four criteria.
1) There is scientific evidence that their implementation would significantly reduce preventable mistakes.
2) Implementation by the health industry is feasible in the near term.
3) Consumers can appreciate their value.
4) Health plans, purchasers and/or consumers can easily ascertain their presence or absence when assessing health care providers. Because the health industry needs time to meet these standards, Leapfrog works with the provider community to arrive at aggressive but feasible target dates for implementation of Leapfrog’s recommended quality practices.