THE LEAPFROG GROUP
It is a national non-governmental organization, which is also non-profit. The organization was founded by private health experts and the United States’ leading employees, to make progress towards safe, quality, and affordable healthcare in the US. The founders wanted to achieve these goals by promoting transparency by collecting data and public reporting initiatives. The Leapfrog Group strives to save lives by reducing cases of medical errors, infections, injuries, and accidents through public reports of hospital performance (Chaparro et al. 2017). Approximately 2,000 hospitals participate voluntarily in the group’s surveys, and the group releases their results during the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey. Transparency is a noble quality in health providers and health institutions. However, it is a double-edged tool, which can either quickly build trust or can erode trust.
PROS
Leapfrog Group empowers patients by putting the right information within their reach. This promotes patient-centered care, since patients are aware of what choices to make, and can choose from the best-rated hospitals and physicians. Besides, the Leapfrog Group assists healthcare consumers in choosing their pocket-friendly facilities and physicians, since there is a rise in out-of-pocket medical expenses of medical costs. According to Saghafian & Hopp (2019), transparency in healthcare has encouraged healthcare providers to change behavior, and most physicians strive to do the right things.
CONS
Health consumers require reliable data presented logically to inform their decisions on the hospital, health plans, or physician choice. However, information available for decision making is incomprehensible, incomplete, or subjective, where opponents use such platforms to daunt the image of other hospitals, or doctors. This causes patients to distrust physicians, while physicians feel attacked (Saghafian & Hopp, 2019). Besides, information on Google sites may be unreliable, since small samples are used to make conclusions. Hence, it can mislead healthcare consumers in making healthcare decisions.
NURSING CARE DATA AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC
Injury and falls, while in the hospital settings is one of the nursing care data that should be made public. An increase in such incidences may be an indicator of factors including nurse-patient ratio, poor hospital infrastructure to prevent such cases, or that healthcare personnel needs more training on preventing falls and injuries to patients. Making such data available for the public challenges administrations of healthcare facilities and the government to strive to solve this problem. In my opinion, health facilities should collect individualized nursing care data to evaluate nursing care, since nurses do health education, prevent injuries and adverse medical events, and alleviate suffering. All these data can help in appraising a nurse.
REFERENCES
Chaparro, J. D., Classen, D. C., Danforth, M., Stockwell, D. C., & Longhurst, C. A. (2017). National trends in safety performance of electronic health record systems in children’s hospitals. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(2), 268-274.
Saghafian, S., & Hopp, W. J. (2019). The Role of Quality Transparency in Healthcare: Challenges and Potential Solutions. National Academy of Medicine, Forthcoming.