The Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) has announced that it will start providing data to the Leapfrog Group. Maryland's hospitals will as a result begin to receive hospital safety grades from Leapfrog this October (hospitals in all other states already receive grades). Leapfrog's ratings, which are published online, assign to each hospital a single letter grade representing overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm. To assist Leapfrog, staff at MHCC used inpatient claims data from the Health Services Cost Review Commission to generate several hospital-specific quality measures for patients with Medicare, including patient safety indicators. MHCC this week distributed a preview file of the data to quality leads at each facility and hospital staff are encouraged to review the files for accuracy. Leapfrog will also aggregate data from additional sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and the American Hospital Association's Annual Survey, to generate final grades. Hospitals will receive a preview of their grades in September. Questions should be directed to MHCC's Director of the Center for Quality Measurement and Reporting Theressa Lee at theressa.lee@maryland.gov.

A new report commissioned by the American Hospital Association says hospitals and health systems spent $2.7 billion in 2016 on efforts to combat the effects of violence. Preparedness and prevention efforts to address community violence accounted for $280 million of that; unreimbursed medical care for victims of violence was $852 million; $1.1 billion covered security and training costs; and $429 million was for medical care, staffing, indemnity, and other costs as a result of violence against hospital employees. The report was released this week by the AHA at its 25th annual Leadership Summit and in conjunction with the yearlong Hospitals Against Violence initiative that launched last year.

The Maryland Board of Nursing has a new form that licensed direct-entry midwives must sign upon admitting their patients to a Maryland hospital. The General Written Care Plan for Direct-Entry Midwives ( download here) will have to be signed and presented to the hospital when the patient is admitted. Contact Ann Tyminski with the Maryland Board of Nursing with questions.