USA Today by Jayne O’Donnell
June 19, 2018
Leapfrog Group, a hospital rating organization, urged patient safety advocates to contact regulators or sign Leapfrog’s letter to CMS protesting the plan. Anew hospital infection report out from Leapfrog Wednesday found the percentage of hospitals reporting to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and achieving zero infections is way down since 2015.
“I am shocked that they want to reverse course on this,” says Jeanine Thomas, who founded the MRSA Survivors Network after nearly dying of the infection after ankle surgery 18 years ago. “In fact, they should do more.”
CMS chief medical officer Kate Goodrich said the agency “is committed to transparency of quality and cost information” and denied that it was proposing to remove the information from Hospital Compare. She also emphasized that the changes are up for public comment.
Hospitals apparently hadn’t been lobbying for the change, but the American Hospital Association said the amount of data required by different federal programs was burdensome and the change would allow them to focus more on patient safety.
“I’d never see them having the gall to be that outrageous,” says Binder. “But I’m sure they are not going to complain.”