March 24, 2025
In a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, Leah Binder, President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, congratulates him on his strong commitment to health care transparency and urges him to pair price transparency with quality and safety data.
"There is no good price for bad care." Read Full Letter Here
-Leah Binder, Leapfrog President and CEO
Leapfrog highlights key recommendations to strengthen CMS reporting, which include:
- Expand CMS quality reporting on outpatient hospital surgery units and ambulatory surgery centers, as well as other settings with little or no quality data such as urgent care centers;
- Report quality and safety of facilities serving Medicare Advantage beneficiaries; currently they are exempt, so CMS reports on fee-for-service beneficiaries only;
- Support preservation of the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a part of CDC that works with all state health departments to report patient safety indicators like healthcare-associated infections, which is used by CMS in public reporting;
- Strengthen CMS’ approach to never events and align with Leapfrog’s policy, which is endorsed by hundreds of large employers;
- Accelerate CMS’ work on reporting on patient-reported experience and outcomes, and use of EMR data for quality reporting
- Report results from all federal hospital programs by bricks-and-mortar facility. Currently CMS reports by CMS Certification Number and that can include whole hospital systems reported as one rate.