2022 Validation Report
Review for: The Leapfrog Group
Validation Achieved: Metrics
Savings Valid Through: April 2023
Company Profile
Category:
Non-Profit
Website:
Public or Private:
Private
Year Established:
2000
President:
Leah Binder
Company Contact:
Description:
The Leapfrog Group is a nonprofit watchdog organization that serves as a voice for health care purchasers, using their collective influence to foster positive change in U.S. health care. Leapfrog is the nation’s premier advocate of hospital transparency—collecting, analyzing and disseminating hospital data to inform value-based purchasing.
Claim Assertion
The Leapfrog intervention publishes hospital’s safety and quality records, with two goals in mind: one is to encourage hospitals to improve their safety and quality records; two is to encourage employers to prefer the better performing hospitals. The easy access to Leapfrog’s reporting on hospitals in itself may motivate hospitals to improve; there is evidence that hospitals did respond to the publicity of these records. For employers, Leapfrog offers a calculator to estimate savings from having more patients served at safer hospitals.
Method/Calculation/Examples
The Leapfrog Lives & Dollars Lost calculator uses credible and reliable data sources, including the data gathered from hospitals, to estimate the costs and health consequences of medical errors. The calculator offers estimates for avoidable deaths, the cost of errors that is built in to hospital charges, and how much of the employer’s total spending is for errors.
Findings & Validation
The calculator produces an estimate of 13% of total medical spending is for hospital errors, along with estimates of the number of avoidable deaths and the extra costs for each hospital admission.
Limitations
The estimates, though based upon credible data, are not from an actual implementation of the intervention.
Validation and Credibility Guarantee
The Leapfrog Group achieved validation for Metrics. Validation Institute is willing to provide up to a $10,000 guarantee as part of their Credibility Guarantee Program. To learn more, visit https://validationinstitute.com/credibility-guarantee/.
Program Validation
Program has strong evidence of significant impact on both patient outcomes and on medical costs. Evidence is assessed based upon the certainty it provides that the result is due to the program and not to other factors, such as recruiting people to participate in the program who are most likely to succeed.
Savings
Can reduce health care spending per case/participant or for the plan/purchaser overall.
Outcomes
Product/solution has measurably improved an outcome (risk, hba1c, events, employee retention, etc.) of importance.
Metrics
Credible sources and valid assumptions create a reasonable estimate of a program’s impact.
Contractual Integrity
Vendor is willing to put a part of their fees "at risk" as a guarantee.
About Validation Institute
Validation Institute is a professional community that advocates for organizations and approaches that deliver better health value - stronger health outcomes at lower cost. We connect, train, and certify health care purchasers, and we validate and connect providers delivering superior results. Founded in 2014, the mission of the organization has consistently been to help provide transparency to buyers of health care.
Validation Review ProcessValidation Institute has a team of epidemiologists and statisticians who review each program. The team focuses on three components:
- Evidence from published literature that a similar intervention had similar results.
- The reliability and credibility of the data sources.
- The rigor of the approach to calculating results
To achieve validation, the program has to satisfy each of these components. VI’s team then summarizes the review into a report which is publicly available. Details of VI’s review are available with the program’s permission.
