In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on how patients are receiving better treatment in hospitals and from doctors, the organization Leapfrog Group is mentioned in a short paragraph:
Vetting a Hospital Gets Easier
Data on hospital quality and safety has been available online for some time, but not in a very user-friendly way. This year, the Leapfrog Group, a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage, graded hospitals, from A to F, based on measures of patient safety. Some hospitals got poor grades and took issue with the methodology, which was subsequently altered slightly. Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder says it is “the toughest standard-bearer and provides the most complete picture of a hospital’s quality and safety.” The list of 1,200 hospitals, released Dec. 4, ranks only 89 of them as top facilities. Patients can use a free website or a mobile app to compare hospitals based on overall safety or based on selected procedures such as heart bypass surgery.
You can search by state, city/state, zip code, and specific hospital. Here’s a link to the ratings of California’s hospitals:
www.leapfroggroup.org/cp?frmbmd=cp_listings&find_by=state&city=&state=CA&cols=oa
Unfortunately, lots of hospitals “declined to respond.”
Robin