News: Hospital sues Leapfrog Group over inaccurate patient safety grades

Most people in the healthcare world are aware of the controversy-fraught public reporting websites for quality data. The issue commonly stems from the inconsistent methodology between reporting sites, leading to facilities receiving different grades from different sources with little to no explanation.

Saint Anthony Hospital in Chicago, however, decided to sue the Leapfrog Group over its alleged use of inaccurate information when it lowered the hospital’s patient safety grades, according to Fierce Healthcare.  

The complaint says Leapfrog Group used inaccurate data alleging that the facility only electronically prescribes medications between 50% and 74% of the time and thus lowered the hospital’s patient safety grade from an “A” to a “C.” The hospital says it actually uses electronic prescribing 95% of the time and that it provided the correct data to Leapfrog prior to the pronouncement of the new grade.

Leapfrog publishes their grades twice yearly with the fall release on October 31. As of this week, the scores for Saint Anthony Hospital have not been posted.

Editor’s note: To read Fierce Healthcare’s coverage of this story, click here. To read about both governmental and private public reporting websites, click here. To read about U.S. News and World Report’s 2017-2018 top hospital list, click here.