Los Angeles Times Profiles Leapfrog Group

The Jan. 22 Los Angeles Times profiled the Leapfrog Group, a 14-month-old coalition of more than 90 public and private organizations and "perhaps the most influential bloc of health care purchasers in the nation." The Times reports that the group has pushed the "envelope of reform with its own national agenda for reducing medical costs." The group, which spends $52 billion per year on health coverage for about one in 10 Americans, includes Fortune 500 companies, such as AT&T Corp., IBM Corp., Boeing Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Motors Corp., as well as state and city insurance and health care authorities. To address the nation's "unraveling" system of managed care, the Leapfrog Group has developed "what many say are viable industry reforms, but ones that are on the groups' own terms and not without controversy." The group has launched two Web-based programs -- a public Web site that provides consumers with performance ratings for about 300 hospitals nationwide and a private Web site for employees at five large New York-area companies that ranks top hospitals affiliated with the state's largest insurer -- that help measure hospital performance. The group hopes to develop a system that will allow consumers to have "detailed information about how well hospitals perform in terms of patient care and medical outcomes." According to the Leapfrog Group, "by providing such data, the rate of medical errors will decrease because consumers will choose hospitals that perform successful surgeries, thus reducing costs as well." Consumer and physician advocates have warned that "any reforms being pushed by powerful health care purchasers" such as the Leapfrog Group "will be motivated primarily by keeping costs low, not improving care." However, the Times reports that most health care analysts, academicians and physicians "generally perceive the efforts by groups such as Leapfrog as positive at a time when the system is badly frayed." Suzanne Delbanco, executive director of the Leapfrog Group, said, "Our goal is to save lives and reduce preventable medical mistakes by giving consumers the information they need to make more-informed medical choices" (White, Los Angeles Times, 1/22).