Leapfrog Adds Several Measures, Including Post-Operative Sepsis, to Scorecard

Fall 2021 safety grades continue to show significant variation in patient safety performance across U.S. hospitals

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit national watchdog organization that assigns a letter grade to U.S. hospitals based on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections that kill or harm patients, has added several new measures, including post-operative sepsis. Overall, sepsis in all settings, including post-operative sepsis, kills more than 270,000 people per year and is the costliest condition in U.S. hospitals. In the Leapfrog rating, the number score hospitals receive represents the number of surgical patients that experienced a sepsis infection for every 1,000 people who had surgery. The fall grades show significant variation in patient safety performance across U.S. hospitals, which underscores the importance of access to information that allows patients to select the safest hospital available to them.