Leapfrog’s deceptive scoring system puts patients’ lives at risk by only rewarding hospitals with passing grades that either pay or supply free data for their flawed survey

Palm Beach, Fla. – April 30, 2025 – Delray Medical Center,  Good Samaritan Medical Center, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, West Boca Medical Center, and St. Mary’s Medical Center, trusted leaders in healthcare and patient safety, announced today that they have filed a legal complaint against The Leapfrog Group (“Leapfrog”) alleging that the organization’s hospital patient safety ratings are inaccurate, corrupt, and misleading. The Palm Beach Health Network hospitals assert that these deceptive rankings not only harm their reputation but also misinform patients and the community about the quality of care provided at its facilities, putting lives at risk.

The legal action comes after repeated efforts by the hospitals to engage with The Leapfrog Group to address concerns regarding its flawed rating methodology. Leapfrog did not punish the plaintiff hospitals for the past four years that they did not respond to its voluntary data requests, until last year when they changed their criteria to deliberately fail non-participating hospitals.

According to the complaint, Leapfrog fails to fairly evaluate hospitals that do not complete its hospital survey, and rather than indicating that there is insufficient data to issue a grade to non-participating hospitals, it instead assigns a score equivalent to the “Worst Hospital’s Score” on several measures. This flawed methodology does not accurately reflect hospitals’ performance or patient outcomes.

“Patient safety and clinical excellence are at the core of everything we do”, said Sheri Montgomery, CEO of Good Samaritan Medical Center. “Our hospitals are continuously working to improve the patient experience and have been recognized repeatedly for our leadership in quality, innovation, and compassionate care. We will not allow that record to be smeared by The Leapfrog Group’s reckless, self-serving, and fundamentally dishonest ratings system.”

Leapfrog’s so-called grades are not grounded in credible science or independent analysis – they are riddled with falsehoods, distorted by undisclosed financial incentives, and misused to pressure hospitals and mislead the public. This is not transparency – it’s a marketing scheme masquerading as public health advocacy.

Leapfrog aggressively pushes hospitals to pay for its consulting services and promotional licenses in exchange for better grades. Those who decline to participate are punished with artificially low ratings – false and damaging scores that erode patient trust and undermine access to care. Patients are the ones who suffer most when misinformation is passed off as fact.

The hospitals are taking legal action to expose this scheme, protect patients, and restore integrity to the way healthcare information is shared in this country. Public confidence in our healthcare system depends on accuracy, fairness, and truth – not pay-for-play ratings and deceptive tactics.

Key Issues Raised in the Complaint

• Flawed Methodology: The Leapfrog Group uses incomplete, outdated, or non-existent data to calculate its ratings, leading to inaccurate assessments of hospital performance and deceiving patients.
• Lack of Transparency: The organization publishes these false and inaccurate rankings on a consumer-facing page, suggesting that hospitals have received failing grades when in reality many have declined to participate in the organization’s hospital survey. Worse still for patients, Leapfrog rewards hospitals that participate in their survey and either pay or supply free data to Leapfrog with “A”s and “B”s, even when those hospitals pose significant risk to patient safety.
• Harm to Patients: Misleading ratings can erode public trust in hospitals and cause patients to make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information, potentially compromising their care.
  

Palm Beach Health Network is the largest healthcare provider in Palm Beach County and provides the area’s only Level 1 Trauma Centers, Comprehensive Stroke Centers, and Children’s Hospital. Many of the plaintiff hospitals have earned recognition from other independent, accredited organizations for their commitment to excellence in healthcare. They receive patient transfers for critical, higher level of care services for the sickest and most vulnerable patients more often than other hospitals in the area. And while they recognize, like all hospitals, that they have work to do to ensure their patients receive the highest possible care, they will no longer accept Leapfrog’s misleading rankings that endanger public trust and patient lives.

“We owe it to our patients, physicians, staff, and community to challenge these unfair ratings,” said Montgomery. “Leapfrog’s false and deceptive pay-to-play ranking system puts patient lives in danger and we will finally hold them accountable.”