Leapfrog: Patient Safety
The Leapfrog Patient Safety Initiative:
Transparency reveals superiority
Each year up to 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors. More than one million preventable errors occur annually.
Created by the Business Roundtable with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Leapfrog Group was founded to help save lives and reduce preventable medical mistakes by giving consumers the information they need to make more informed health care choices.
NJHCQI was chosen to be the regional roll out organization for the Leapfrog Patient Safety Initiative, which promotes a marketplace in which consumers can easily discern hospital and physician quality and value—and to create a health care system in which superior providers are rewarded.
With the help of leading health care and research experts, the Leapfrog Group identified proven safety practices to prevent medical mistakes in hospitals by asking that:
- medical orders be entered in a computer to minimize mistakes
- consumers select hospitals with proven outcomes or extensive experience with certain high risk conditions and procedures
- hospitals staff their Intensive Care Units with specially trained critical care physicians
- Hospitals adopt the National Quality Forums Safe Practices