Participation in Public Reporting of Hospital Performance
Health Net requires that all urban, acute care participating hospitals annually report safety and quality data results to at least one readily available consumer outlet, such as the Leapfrog Group Patient Safety Survey and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare website.
WebMD’s Hospital Advisor and publiclyavailable hospital quality information
Health Net's Hospital Advisor Tool from WebMD offers members a wide range of details about the quality performance of individual hospitals, including rates of complications and mortality, the quantity of specific procedures performed at the facility, typical lengths of stay, average cost, and a variety of quality and patient safety indicators. The data is based on sources such as state reporting, survey results from The Leapfrog Group, CMS hospital quality indicators, and hospital patient satisfaction information. Health Net promotes member use of hospital quality data in mailed member letters and newsletters, online, by email, and in paid social media campaigns.
Similar data can be accessed by providers at the following publicly available websites:
- Cal Hospital Compare
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services resource Care Compare
- The Leapfrog Group (see below) for hospital ratings and Hospital Safety Grades
The Leapfrog Group
The Leapfrog Group is an organization founded to promote patient safety and improve quality of care. As a Leapfrog Partner, Health Net promotes participation in the Leapfrog hospital and ambulatory surgery center (ASC) surveys, which offer consumers key information about a facility’s quality and safety performance with respect to established patient safety practices and progress toward national quality standards. Examples of hospital survey measures include:
- Computerized physician order entry.
- Intensive care unit physician staffing.
- Evidence-based hospital referral.
- Safe practices score based on National Quality Forum standards.
Participation in Leapfrog’s surveys offers hospitals and ASCs the ability to assess their strengths and weaknesses in areas such as hospital-acquired infection scores and evidence-based care to address common acute conditions. In addition to making these survey findings publicly available, Leapfrog publishes a Hospital Safety Grade. This composite score assigns individual hospitals a letter grade to indicate hospital performance on patient safety according to an analysis of up to 27 quality measures. For more information, visit The Leapfrog Group.