To Leapfrog or Not to Leapfrog…This is the Question?
To
Leapfrog or Not to Leapfrog…This is the Question?
Scotty
Silva, BAS, RRT, RCP
Crowd-sourced reviews and independent
review sources are now the acceptable standards for researching businesses or
any entity that we spend any money on. This has emboldened the public and
created avenues for them to write reviews on their experiences and express
strong opinions. The ripple effect has been that may people now go to the
reviews section for the business or service that they are considering prior
to patronizing them. Many consumers utilize the reviews (good or bad) to make
what they deem to be an informed decision on whether or not to spend their hard
earned money at that business or not. A good or a bad review can make or break
a company as the weight that each review carries can result in a highly
subjective value judgment from consumers. For many internet savvy businesses,
they use the crowd-sourced reviews as an effective marketing tool and even a
cleverly worded response to a bad review can be capitalized into good
publicity. The established value of such reviews is indisputable to most
consumers and businesses alike!
One
recognized challenge to internet-based review tools such as Yelp, Facebook, Trip Advisor,
or industry-specific review sources such as LeapFrog or Hospitalcompare.gov is
whether or not they can provide truly object and fair reviews. As an example,
there tends to be a bias towards consumers that may have a bad experience and
as such generate a bad review as compared to consumers who have a favorable
one. A bad review may be based solely on one bad experience and yet it may be
the only review that is either written by that customer or becomes a focal point
of the entire review section on a company’s website. How objective are these
reviews and should they be the primary determinant in whether or not to do
business.
Healthcare
has remained relatively immuned from such reviews until recent years when
LeapFrog Group published their first report; “To Err is Human” and they sought
to objectively identify the range of patients in the United States that had
lost their lives in hospitals due to avoidable mistakes. This lead to the
creation of the Annual LeapFrog Report that allows patients to go to the
website to enter their city or zip code to see how hospitals in their immediate
area score in areas such as; Inpatient Care Management, Medication Management,
Maternity Care, and Infections and Injuries. Each area has sub-categories that
look at various specifics points such as the number of cesarean sections that
are performed or how frequently that patients get Urinary Catheter Infections
in that specific hospital. The hospitals are then graded with a standard A – F grading
scale and this becomes available to the general public. This allows consumers /
patients to make informed decisions about where they receive their care.
Needless to say
this has become a very controversial topic in healthcare for several reasons. First,
the hospitals are allowed to self-report their data to LeapFrog and there is again
a question of the integrity of the reporting, as hospitals are aware the
potential public backlash of reporting unfavorable findings and trends in their
clinical practices. There are also some reasons to suspect that hospitals may
be embellishing some findings to give a more favorable perception from
patients. Second, the LeapFrog reporting is not mandated and as such many, if
not most, hospitals “decline to respond” and do not have their data available
for public access. Lastly, LeapFrog is criticized for being 2-3 years behind in
their reporting and many hospitals justify a “low” grade as being old and
outdated and not reflective of the most current changes to clinical practices
A true
indicator of the impact that internet marketing is having in general, but
specifically in healthcare, is the fact that hospitals are now reluctantly understanding
the importance of crowd-sourced reviews or independent review sources as a
means of promoting the quality of services that
they provide. I will also look at sites such as; www.hospitalcompare.gov in future
postings, but would challenge you to determine how effective these sites and
their functions are to you as a consumer in determining where you choose to
spend your money and who you trust to provide services to you or your family.
Just start by accessing the site below to compare the hospitals in your
immediate area and even look at areas of patient care that may have pertained
to you in the past year – you might be surprised!
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