The Leapfrog Group is urging CMS to scrap a proposal that would end public reporting of data on serious medical and surgical complications that occur in U.S. hospitals.
In its 2023 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule, CMS shared plans to suppress data reported by hospitals as part of a measure called the CMS Patient Safety and Adverse Events Composite, or CMS PSI 90. This measure is a composite score of 10 serious and potentially fatal care complications, including pressure ulcers, falls that break a hip, lung collapses, blood clots and postoperative sepsis.
These 10 complications kill an estimated 25,000 people a year and harm 94,000, according to Leapfrog.
"Data on these complications is not available to the public from any other source," Leapfrog said in a May 26 post on its website. "If CMS suppresses this data, all of us will be in the dark on which hospitals put us most at risk, yet we all shoulder the burden of these dangerous, preventable complications."
Leapfrog is calling on patient safety advocates, clinicians and citizens to make their voices heard during CMS' comment period on the proposed rule, which runs through June 17. The organization is also collecting signatures for two letters it plans to send the agency.
Leapfrog's' call for action came the same day the safety organization released its Pediatric Care Report, which found nearly 40 percent of pediatric patients and their parents did not feel well-equipped to report safety concerns in 2021.