New Analysis by The Leapfrog Group and Castlight Health Highlights An Alarming Variation in Survival Rates for High-Risk Procedures

WASHINGTON, March 12, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nonprofit hospital watchdog The Leapfrog Group today released its report on  High-Risk Procedures, an in-depth examination of four high-risk surgeries with significant variation in survival rates across hospitals. The analysis reveals hospital choice can mean the difference between life and death.

Across procedures only 15 to 40-percent of surveyed hospitals fully meet Leapfrog's standards. Measures are searchable by region or hospital via Leapfrog's Hospital Survey Results

Key findings include:

• Pancreatectomy: This surgery to remove all or part of the pancreas has a significant variance in survival rate by hospital, at 19-percent - from 81 to 100-percent.
• Esophagectomy: An esophagectomy removes all or part of the esophagus. The average survival rate is 90-percent with a variation by hospital of 88 to 98-percent.
• Abdominal aortic aneurism (AAA) repair: A surgery to treat an enlarged abdominal aorta has a 13-percent variation in predicted survival rates -from 85.7 to 98.9-percent.
• Aortic valve replacements (AVR): This heart surgery treats problems with the heart's aortic valve, and only 15-percent of hospitals fully met Leapfrog's standard.

This is the second in a series of reports based on the 2014 Leapfrog Hospital Survey of 1,501 U.S. hospitals with data analysis by Castlight Health. Future publications will be available at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/HospitalSurveyReport

About The Leapfrog Group
National nonprofit watchdog The Leapfrog Group evaluates and reports on the safety and quality performance of U.S. hospitals for the benefit of consumers, employers and other health care purchasers. Leapfrog is deeply committed to increasing transparency among health care providers in order to achieve its goal of reducing the estimated 440,000 annual deaths from unnecessary hospital errors. Findings from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey provide consumers with potentially lifesaving information on hospital quality.

About Castlight Health
Castlight Health, Inc. is the leader in Enterprise Healthcare Management. Recognized as a top 2014 software platform by the HR Technology Conference & Exposition, Castlight's Enterprise Healthcare Cloud enables employers to understand and manage all their healthcare investments while helping employees make the best possible healthcare decisions. For more information visit  www.castlighthealth.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and Like us on Facebook.

CONTACTS: Lauren Bercarich
Stern + Associates (on behalf of
The Leapfrog Group)
908-325-3860
[email protected]  

Lorie Fiber
Castlight Health
646-318-0575 
[email protected]

SOURCE The Leapfrog Group