In the October 31 D Healthcare Daily article “Leapfrog Releases Fall 2014 Hospital Safety Scores,” W. Stephen Love, president/CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, offered a statement on the grades of area hospitals. Love’s statement:

“Hospitals support transparency in quality and safety information and sharing improvements with the communities they serve. As with any report card, Leapfrog grades must be interpreted within context. Some of the data is over 2 years old and may not reflect recent performance improvements. Additionally, not all measurements apply to all patients and patients should use all available tools at their disposal including talking with family and friends in making health care decisions. Leapfrog is one of numerous organizations providing report cards and rankings of hospitals or hospital performance. These organizations use different quality measurements, performance data etc. so hospitals may perform well on one report card and poorly on another. Unfortunately, with many different report cards, it becomes very confusing for consumers and many health care professionals. With that in mind, we recommend that people access a document http://aamc.org/publicreporting developed by the Association of American Medical colleges (AAMC) which provides guiding principles for evaluating provider performance.”

The full article, penned by Matt Goodman, can be read here.