Specialty Focus 5/13/25: Five S. FL hospitals file legal complaint against The Leapfrog Group + Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

May 13, 2025 | Volume XIV | Issue 19

Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD write for KevinMD:

Since the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when civil service exams evaluated intellectual abilities, people have used cognitive assessments to identify special talents or, more commonly, to detect problems.

We’ve come a long way in 2,000 years! Today, neuropsychological batteries—combinations of assessments to detect dementia, learning disabilities, and cognitive impairments from chronic conditions or acute events—are widely used. Yet, far too often, these assessments are administered reactively, only after severe deficits are evident. By the time a neuropsychologist, neurologist, or geriatrician looks “under the hood,” it’s often too late for meaningful prevention.

Five S. FL hospitals file legal complaint against The Leapfrog Group

Palm Beach Health Network

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 on April 30th 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.

Autonomous coding with AI shows impressive results at OHSU

Bill Siwicki | Healthcare IT News

Oregon Health & Science University is a public research university focusing primarily on health sciences with a main campus, including two hospitals, in Portland, Oregon.

The Oregon health system's coder workload has been reduced by nearly 28%, while coding-related denials for autonomously coded radiology cases are now 70% lower than those managed manually. The automated denial rate is also substantially lower.

Measles cases in US surpass 1,000 for the first time since 2019, CDC reports

FOX News

Senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel joins 'The Fox Report' to discuss the uptick in confirmed cases and more.

The U.S. surpassed 1,000 measles cases Friday, and Texas still accounts for the vast majority of cases in an outbreak that also spread measles to New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas. Other states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Indiana, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Watch the video HERE.

Last Word

Publisher of Week in Review, Specialty Focus, FHIweekly & Game Changers