Just over half (52 percent) of hospitals responding to the Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey, a national hospital quality rating tool, indicate they have adopted the Leapfrog Never Events policy, a list of actions they pledge to take whenever a “never event”--a rare medical error that should never happen to a patient--occurs.
This year, 1,285 hospitals reported for the first time on their adherence to the Leapfrog Never Events policy, by which hospitals pledge to apologize to the patient and/or family affected by the never event and waive all costs directly related to the event, among other actions.
Leapfrog follows the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) definition of never events. The NQF’s list of 28 “serious reportable events” includes errors such as surgery performed on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient, leaving a foreign object inside a patient after surgery, and discharging an infant to the wrong person. Read the press release.
