Memphis Business Group on Health is proud to be the Leapfrog Regional Roll-Out for Memphis and West Tennessee and to serve as Vice Chair of the Leapfrog Board of Directors. We are excited to see that public reporting of hospital acquired infections is resulting in improved care for patients. MBGH has been working with our Memphis hospitals to report this information since 2009. Thank you to these hospitals for being willing to report and for focusing on improvement. Memphis area results can be seen at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/cp?frmbmd=cp_listings&find_by=zip&zip=38120&radius=100&cols=oa.
From The Leapfrog Group: October 19, 2011 – Today, as the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) announced
that hospitals and other health care facilities are doing a better job of
preventing four common infections, The Leapfrog Group’s CEO, Leah Binder,
pointed to the importance of transparency and public reporting in helping to
reach this outcome.
Binder noted, “We are pleased to see these
improvements in rates of infections in hospitals and applaud organizations,
that are, like Leapfrog, pushing for continued improvement. For us, this points
to the importance of publicly reporting hospital performance on important
safety measures. According to today’s announcement from the CDC, the infection
rates that declined most significantly, by 35%, are central-line associated
blood stream infections in critical-care patients. The Leapfrog Group began
collecting and publicly reporting out these data for almost 1,000 hospitals
nationwide in 2009 so that consumers who wish to go to hospitals with zero or
low infection rates can now make an informed choice. The hundreds of purchasers
who have led the Leapfrog campaign for transparency in hospital safety and
quality take great comfort in this progress and recommit themselves to getting
even more hospitals to report publicly to Leapfrog’s annual hospital survey in
the future.”
Through its annual survey, The Leapfrog Group asks hospitals
to report their rates of central-line associated blood stream infections
utilizing the same measure as the CDC/NHSN. Hospital rates of infections per
ICU type can be viewed at www.leapfroggroup.org/cp.
In addition, this year, Leapfrog completed a qualitative study to begin to
understand how community hospitals were able to get to and maintain a rate of
zero central-line infections in ICUs. The study, entitled “Getting
to Zero: Reducing Rates of Central-line Associated Blood Stream Infections in
Community Hospitals,” found that all four hospitals involved in the study
used a checklist and guidelines promulgated by the Agency for Healthcare Quality
and Research (AHRQ) and the CDC. (Download the report at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/media/file/Final_GettingToZero.pdf)
A hospital’s
full safety and quality results from the 2011 Leapfrog Hospital Survey can be
viewed at www.leapfroggroup.org/cp. In
addition to hospital rates of central-line associated blood stream infections,
visitors can also find information, by hospital, on rates of other
hospital-acquired conditions, survival rates for certain high-risk surgeries,
rates of early elective deliveries, and much more information about a
hospital’s safety and quality.
The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee
health benefits founded a decade ago to work for improvements in health care
safety, quality, and affordability. Leapfrog purchaser members use hospital
survey results in contracting, open enrollment with their employees and other
public reporting, benefits design, and value-based purchasing programs.