National non-profit The Leapfrog Group announced today its partnership with DHG Healthcare to pilot on-site data verification of its annual, voluntary hospital survey. DHG Healthcare’s team of clinicians and consultants will visit hospitals that volunteered to participate in the pilot to 1) verify accuracy of responses submitted to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and 2) communicate best practices for using Leapfrog Hospital Survey Results to improve patient care.
The on-site data verification pilot program was designed to complement the rigorous data review process that Leapfrog currently uses to ensure the integrity of data submitted to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. By partnering with DHG Healthcare to conduct this work, and leveraging both their clinical expertise and experience in value-based purchasing, Leapfrog can ensure that purchasers and patients have access to the most reliable data on hospital safety, quality, and efficiency.
“It’s our mission at Leapfrog to advocate for healthcare transparency and a key aspect of that movement is the data that helps inform the changes needed in the quality and safety of care in the U.S.,” said Leah Binder, President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “Launching this on-site data verification pilot program is an integral factor in helping better educate the work we do, and giving hospitals more tools to improve.”
Four of Leapfrog’s regional business coalition representatives were critical to launching the pilot program: Cristie Travis, CEO of Memphis Business Group on Health, Kathy Sakraida, director of Quality Initiatives at the Northeast Business Group on Health, Anne Ladd, CEO at the Wyoming Business Coalition on Health, and Ashley Tait-Dinger, director of Quality and Value Measurement and manager of Finance at the Florida Health Care Coalition. A total of 10 hospitals in those regions volunteered to participate in the pilot with Leapfrog and DHG Healthcare.
“DHG Healthcare is thrilled to continue our longstanding relationship with The Leapfrog Group as part of such an important pilot program,” said Brad Benton, Managing Partner, DHG Healthcare. “Healthcare providers stand at a crucial operational inflection point across multiple dimensions; new strategies in critical domains, including quality and safety performance as reported by The Leapfrog Group, will profoundly impact both patient centricity and financial sustainability, which themselves are essential to providers’ efforts at achieving risk capability.”
The pilot program will be completed late 2015, after which Leapfrog and DHG Healthcare will develop a phased implementation strategy for all hospitals that submit data to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey.