Leapfrog Group

Background

In 1998, a consortium of large employers began to discuss how they could collaborate and use their purchasing power to influence the quality and affordability of healthcare. These employers realized that billions of dollars were being spent on healthcare without any evaluation of its quality or its providers. A 2000 national Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, estimated that as many as 98,000 hospital patients die each year from preventable medical errors. The report recommended that large employers could use their market leverage to influence the quality and safety of healthcare. The founders of Leapfrog recognized that significant “leaps” forward could be taken to improve patient safety and quality by rewarding hospitals that implemented substantial changes. In 2000, BRT set aside funding, and the Leapfrog Group was officially created.

The Leapfrog Group has a growing consortium that includes many of the nation's largest corporations and other large purchasers of healthcare that provide benefits to more than 37 million individuals across the country. Member organizations of Leapfrog agree to make their healthcare-purchasing decisions with the goal of encouraging quality improvement among the providers and consumers involved. Leapfrog estimates that if all hospitals in the nation implemented its first three leaps of recommended safety and quality practices, more than 65,000 lives could be saved, more than 907,000 medical errors could be prevented, and about $41.5 billion could be saved annually.

Initiatives

The Leapfrog Group is well-known for its Hospital Quality and Safety Survey, which is conducted annually and completed by hospitals on a voluntary basis. The survey measures hospital performance on the use of computer physician order entry, evidence-based hospital referral, intensive care unit staffing by physicians experienced in critical care medicine, and the Leapfrog safe practices score. Leapfrog's survey goals are based on the following criteria: There is substantial scientific evidence that the safety and quality practices can significantly reduce preventable medical errors; the implementation of these practices is feasible; [Page 680]consumers can readily benefit from these practices; and health plans, purchasers, and consumers can readily distinguish if these practices are present or absent in selecting their healthcare provider.

In 2008, the survey integrated the first set of hospital efficiency measures using standardized measures from the Joint Commission. The survey also serves as the basis for Leapfrog's Hospital Rewards Program, a pay-for-performance program that assesses the value of patient care by measuring performance along two dimensions- the quality of the care hospitals provide and how efficiently they deliver it.

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