Are hospital ratings systems transparent? An examination of Consumer Reports and the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade

Abstract

The health care industry is complex, dynamic, and large. In such uncertain environments where a great deal of revenue is at stake, competition and comparative claims flourish. One such manifestation is hospital ratings systems. This research examines two influential hospital ratings to explore whether the hospital ratings of each system was straightforward and reproducible. Regressions and structural equations models were fit to examine the relationships among the hospital ratings constructs. Both hospital ratings systems were excellent in their transparency and reproducibility. The Consumer Reports and Leapfrog ratings systems can confidently tout that their hospital scores reflect what they claim to measure. The unique aspects of each system are also noted.

Keywords:

• Consumer Reports
• healthcare
• hospital ratings
• Hospital Safety Grade
• Leapfrog
• transparency

Note

Acknowledgements

Timothy J. Vogus voluntarily serves on the Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade Expert Panel and receive no compensation for his service. We are grateful to John Bott, James Dickerson, Kristina Mycek, Doris Peter, and Consumer Reports and Leah Binder and the Leapfrog Group for providing Consumer Reports’ Health Safety Score and the Hospital Safety Grade data, respectively, for use in this study.

Disclosure statement

J. Matthew Austin discloses contract support from The Leapfrog Group for research related to hospital performance measurement, which includes the Hospital Safety Grade.

Notes

1 Although these practices were included in this analysis, Leapfrog has subsequently altered the Hospital Safety Grade to no longer include items related to the work-team (i.e., teamwork training and skill building), medication reconciliation, and care related to ventilated patients.