The Leapfrog Group — a national nonprofit organization committed to improving the quality and safety of healthcare — released a new Lives and Dollars Lost to Medical Errors Calculator to shed light on the significant impact medical errors have on the hospital's bottom line and patient population.
The new tool is essentially an enhanced version of the nonprofit's Hidden Surcharge Calculator launched in 2013.
"When we launched the calculator in 2013, our goal was to expose the hidden surcharges associated with medical errors. Though they aren't indicated as a line item on a bill, employers and purchasers are certainly paying for them," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. "Since introducing the calculator, we're now able to tabulate an even more important estimate of the price purchasers pay — the estimated number of lives that are lost amongst their covered population."
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The new calculator incorporates findings from a collaborative analysis conducted by Leapfrog and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. The analysis revealed hospitals with a grade of D or F from Leapfrog's safety grades carried a patient mortality rate 50 percent higher than hospitals that received an A grade.
To access the calculator, click here.
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