Abstract
The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization formed by employers and other healthcare purchasers, aims to drive improvements in the quality, safety, and costs of hospital care in the United States. We evaluated its first three standards, termed Leaps, all of which rely on the intensive application of health data. Our evaluation was based on Leapfrog’s standards as of 2009 and estimated not only health benefits but also financial gains. The first Leap, Computerized physician order entry seeks to intercept and avert potential medical errors. It entails developing and installing a system into a hospital’s computers, training users, and performing annual maintenance. With an assumed 5-year life, estimated costs and savings from averted complications are $80 and $362 per admission, respectively, giving the benefit–cost ratio 4.5:1. The second Leap, intensivist (specialty) staffing of intensive care units (ICUs) would improve ICU safety, with a monetary value of $2724 per ICU admission. The third Leap, evidence-based hospital referral, would refer to risky surgical procedures to hospitals with the lowest mortality risk, thereby saving one life for every 300 target procedures. If nationally implemented, these three Leaps as defined in 2009 would have generated annual savings of about 58,000 lives and net monetary savings of about US$12 billion. Additional Leaps would likely generate further benefits.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported in part by a contract from The Leapfrog Group to Brandeis University. The sponsor had no control over the content of this report. The authors thank Matt Austin, David Bates, Leah Binder, John Birkmeyer, and Chris Tompkins for constructive comments.
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Lwin, A.K., Shepard, D.S., Masuda, Y. (2019). Monetary and Health Benefits from Better Health Data: Estimating Lives and Dollars Saved from Universal Adoption of the Leapfrog Safety and Quality Standards. In: Chen, YW., Zimmermann, A., Howlett, R., Jain, L. (eds) Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare Systems, and Multimedia. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 145. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8566-7_3
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