The Leapfrog Group, the nonprofit watchdog organization behind hospital safety grades, is proposing several changes to its annual survey for 2024, including the removal of certain questions and tweaks to deadlines.
Of the most significant changes it hopes to get feedback on in its 49-page document, the group asks potential commenters to focus on changes outlined for six key sections. Among them, proposals range from a way to score and publicly report performance on health equity, adding preoperative and post-anesthesia care units to its Bar Code Medication Administration standard; as well as to require stratified reporting of certain cesarean section data by race and ethnicity — though this portion would not be scored or public, Leapfrog noted.
Questions that have not been used for scoring in the past, such as on surgical appropriateness for certain complex adult procedures and patients' selection of outpatient procedures, also could be removed.
Following the comment period, Leapfrog will review, reconfigure the 2024 survey and then pilot it ahead of the April 1 survey launch.
The comment period closes at midnight Eastern time, Dec. 15.