What is Leapfrog in Health Care? The Implications of Hospital Safety Grades

The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization founded in 2000 by the nation’s leading employers and private healthcare experts. The organization serves as a voice for consumers and purchasers, driving change in the quality and safety of American health care. The group annually reports findings from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and bi-annually assigns the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade to hospitals around the country.

What is the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade? 

Twice a year, The Leapfrog Group assigns safety grades to U.S. general hospitals. The grade is a composite score that is made up of up to 22 evidence-based measures of patient safety, such as hand hygiene policies, infections, and falls and trauma—it doesn’t measure death rates, ratings by specialty of procedure, or readmission rates. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade primarily consists of data publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and some measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. 

Once the organization assesses the data, patient safety experts calculate a numerical score for all eligible hospitals. This excludes critical access hospitals (CAH), long-term care and rehabilitation facilities, specialty hospitals, and several other types of facilities. Using a scoring algorithm, hospitals receive a letter grade ranging from A to F. These grades indicate how well hospitals protect patients from preventable errors, injuries, accidents, and infections.

The Importance of Leapfrog to the Health Care Industry 

The Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade helps make today’s hospitals more transparent with their data by releasing information to the public. By reviewing this data, patients and their families can make informed decisions about their local hospitals and where they choose to receive care. Leapfrog helps patients protect themselves and find the best hospital where they live.

According to The Leapfrog Group, “the goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce the over 200,000 yearly deaths for hospital errors and injuries by publicly recognizing safety and exposing harm.” Their essential safety grades hold hospitals accountable and to a higher standard of patient safety in an effort to positively shape overall care. 

How RTLS Technology Can Help Facilities Achieve Higher Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades

Modern advancements, such as Cox Prosight’s Real-Time Location System (RTLS) platform, help hospitals ensure compliance, meet requirements, and keep patients safe. Here are some of the different ways RTLS technology can help your hospital protect patients and score a higher Hospital Safety Grade. 

Prevent Errors with Environmental Monitoring 

Hospitals can have hundreds of temperature-sensitive areas containing items such as medications, blood, specimens, and food, which must be continuously monitored. This process can be extremely tedious and time consuming. Environmental monitoring automates the monitoring and recording of temperature sensitive areas hospital-wide, providing alerts so your staff can quickly address problems. 

Cox Prosight automates manual tasks, monitoring and logging temperature readings 24/7, to keep detailed records for your hospital. This data allows you to look into a specific device or space to view the full history and ensure compliance. Prosight provides easy-to-access reports for all environmentally monitored areas and devices. Streamlined data and reporting ensures that information is accurate and prevents your staff from spending their valuable time  with manual reports – displaying just how automating reports and checks in your hospital consolidates the compliance reporting process for Leapfrog.

Meet Essential Standards for Hand Hygiene Compliance 

Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grade specifically measures your hospital’s hand hygiene compliance — Many facilities struggle to meet certain hygiene requirements and maintain efficient ways of tracking compliance. 

Cox Prosight monitors hand hygiene compliance by tracking when health care workers use hand sanitizing stations. Through RTLS-enabled badges, a staff member’s location is provided in connection with a hand sanitation station. When a member activates a sanitizing dispenser, it’s recorded in the system software. This data can be seen facility-wide, at the departmental level or floor level, and can help with compliance reporting for Leapfrog, easing the burden on the hospital facility.

Help Maintain a High Hospital Safety Grade with Cox Prosight

The Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade holds hospitals to high standards of transparency, cleanliness, and patient safety — standards every facility should strive for. Contact us today to see how our suite of solutions can streamline your hospital’s data and ensure compliance to ultimately drive exceptional patient care.