Leapfrog Hospital Insights is a new program of The Leapfrog Group designed to promote high quality and efficient hospital care. Information collected through the program builds on Leapfrog’s Hospital Quality and Safety Survey and provides additional performance ratings for use by consumers.

Not all hospital care is the same. Since 2001, The Leapfrog Group makes information about hospital quality and safety available for consumers. Now, with the introduction of Leapfrog Hospital Insights, consumers will have more detailed information to help them compare the performance of hospitals and make more-informed choices about their health care.

Leapfrog Hospital Insights measures two categories of hospital care: quality and efficiency. The program is unique and exciting because the efficiency measure is the first nationally comparable measure of hospital efficiency available for the public.

Leapfrog Hospital Insights measures the quality and efficiency of care in five critical clinical areas:

• Heart attack—also known as acute myocardial infarction (AMI)
• Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)—also known as angioplasty
• Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) —also known as bypass surgery
• Pneumonia—also known as community acquired pneumonia (CAP)
• Deliveries/newborn care

These five areas were chosen because they are very common conditions and millions of people experience them every year. Also, researchers and doctors agree on what appropriate care is for these conditions. By gathering this information from hospitals, it is possible to recognize those hospitals that are doing a better job at providing high-quality care than others.

If all hospitals in the US did as well as the best 25% of hospitals on the Leapfrog Hospital Insights measures, every year the health care system could(1)

• Save 66,000 lives
• Save $18.5 billion
• Avoid 145,000 readmissions
• Avoid 187,000 medication errors

Leapfrog makes the Hospital Insights ratings available to consumers to help them select hospitals. Health care purchasers (such as employers) and health plans can also use the ratings to pay rewards to hospitals that deliver—and continue to deliver—high quality and efficient care.

(1) "Potential Benefits of National Implementation of LHRP." August 2006. Available at https://leapfrog.medstat.com/insights/references/OpportunityAnalysis.pdf