Watchdog group to put focus on surgical centers

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization that assesses how nearly 2,000 hospitals across the U.S. handle problems and assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their performance, is now turning its attention to surgery centers.

An October 16, 2018 Kaiser Health News article noted that Leapfrog plans to conduct a national survey to evaluate the safety and quality of up to 5,600 surgery centers, with a specific focus on staffing, patient experience, and surgical outcomes.

Ashish Jha, dean for global strategy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and K.T. Li Professor of Global Health, said the most useful data to collect for the public will focus on events such as deaths after surgery, pain three months after surgery, and admissions to the hospital. “Those are the things that actually matter,” he said.

Read the Kaiser Health News story: Influential Leapfrog Group Jumps In To Rate 5,600 Surgery Centers