Leapfrog Group has made several updates to its annual hospital survey, including changes to emergency department boarding, cybersecurity and natural disaster safety.
The nonprofit watchdog group's survey, which opens April 1, will now refer cybersecurity and natural disaster issues to its help desk as opposed to requiring provider respondents to report them on their survey.
Related: How the Leapfrog Group changed its 2024 hospital survey
The organization received more than 800 public responses to its pilot offering of proposed changes released this month following an initial outreach in November 2024, according to Leah Binder, Leapfrog Group's president and CEO.
Leapfrog plans to make emergency department boarding times its primary focus in terms of changes, Binder said. The organization will begin grading respondent organizations based on cases where a patient admitted through the emergency department waited more than four hours to be transferred from the ED to their intended floor, she said. Binder said the results of ED boarding for each hospital will not be reported, but results of all respondents would be combined.
Emergency department boarding ratings will also be based on some additional demographics, including metrics on pediatric patients who are admitted to an emergency department but are receiving care from another department. Leapfrog Group also plans to ask respondents to separate inpatient admissions from outpatients looking for psychiatric beds, according to Binder.
"We've been hearing lots and lots of accounts of that happening for days," Binder said. "So, you're acute enough that you were admitted, and yet there you are. You're in the middle of the [emergency room,] and your clinician, your doctor, your nurse, they're upstairs on another floor. Typically, they're in another place. The ER physicians and ER nurses, while I'm sure they might glance over your way, are not responsible for your care"
Leapfrog also said hospitals would no longer have to report mergers and acqusitions, according to the organization's summary of changes to its 2025 hospital survey published March 7.
