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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Hospital Safety Ratings Under Scrutiny and What Comes Next for AI with Laura Dyrda
00:11:20
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by Laura Dearda. Laura is the editor in chief at Becker's Healthcare. And more than that, she is what we call a ride or die colleague, one of the very best colleagues and professionals I've ever had a chance to work with. Incredibly exuberant in her work effort, her intelligence, the way she connects with the audience at Becker's Healthcare. She and talks to leaders, health system leaders, orthopedic leaders, and a lot more. Laura joins us regularly on the podcast to talk about different trends and issues that she's watching closely. Laura, let me take it away and ask you what are a couple of stories that you're watching closely currently?
- [00:46]
B
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate that. And you know, definitely Beckers is such an amazing organization. It's been great to work with you and the whole team here for so long. So I appreciate it. I think one of the first things that comes to mind when I look at stories that we're covering closely and are really important for our audience to understand and see. We recently covered news that a federal Judge ruled on March 6 that the Leapfrog Group's hospital safety grades for five hospitals constituted an unfair and deceptive business practice. So we are following that story pretty closely. It found that Leapfrog, which typically gives hospitals and organizations grades A through F based on quality data, a methodology that they developed, had deliberately punished hospitals that didn't voluntarily participate in their program by assigning them artificially low scores with no scientific basis. So when hospitals decide to participate, they're able to promote the Leapfrog grades and market them and really gives them an opportunity to show, hey, we got a Leapfrog A, we're a great institution. But on the flip side, if hospitals decide not to participate, they aren't able to market the grades in the same way. And so Leapfrog was really in a position where they were putting out grades no matter what. And the lawsuit alleged that the methodology, which was implemented in 2024, penalized hospitals that didn't participate in their national surveys, claiming that the lower scores really unfairly damaged those hospitals reputation. So under this ruling, Leapfrog withdrew the ratings from five hospital safety grades from the fall of 2024, spring of 2025, as well as the fall of 2025 for five hospitals that were part of that laws. They really had corrective disclosures to all those entities that paid licenses to those grades. But then Leapfrog told us recently as well that on March 16, they pulled several grades from U.S. hospitals across the board that hadn't participated in a survey. So it's just very interesting to see some of the response here in how they're looking at continuing to figure out what they're going to do in terms of sharing some of these grades in safety and patient safety reports. So it's something that has a ripple effect across many hospitals and systems that did participate, as they're looking at those scores and then those who didn't as well.
- [03:13]
A
No, that's a fascinating story on the leapfrog thing, because if you didn't reply to the survey, you were sort of graded negatively. And I think that just is fascinating. And of course, the judge found it to be unfair, but it did lead to such interesting dialogue because Leapfrog would publish his list of hospitals with bad grades, and many of those hospitals, it turned out, never turned in a survey. So they were sort of graded badly by default. Is that a fair assessment, Laura, of what seems to have been going on?
- [03:43]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And so when the Leapfrog somebody did not participate in their surveys, they took information and data from what that was available from CMS and other sources to configure their grades for those institutions, which may not have been the same, and incomplete information based on those who did participate in the surveys. And of course, for the participating organizations, they had to fill out the surveys and there was a fee involved, too. So it was prohibitive in some ways for those that did not want to participate or be part of it. And I think another part of the dialogue that we have heard come out too, is some of the institutions that did decide to participate, you know, would sometimes be also graded poorly, of course, based on the methodology. And so I think it was in some ways for those institutions hard to justify going through all of that and then, you know, really getting a bad score on the other side. So it's just such a fascinating dialogue and conversation across the board as especially hospitals in smaller settings and rural settings are trying to figure out how they can continue to function and operate in a strong and meaningful way. And it's just been fascinating.
- [05:03]
A
It really is. So we're following the leapfrog story closely. Just fascinating. What else are you watching closely currently?
- [05:10]
B
Absolutely. So something, again, that we've really continued to talk with leaders about across the board is just how they're continuing to evolve with technology and artificial intelligence. It's become a lot more nuanced of a discussion over the last year or so in really thinking through what's going to be impactful for hospitals and leaders across the board. So based on some of my recent conversations of CIOs and IT leaders, including chief AI officers, analytics leaders and more, hospitals are really looking at have spent the last couple of years in pilot mode. So they've been getting vendors in the door, running proof of concept, generating some of the promising numbers in controlled environments for things like ambient AI and technology that can really be beneficial for clinical operations as well as the administrative operations across the board. And many of those that they have decided to continue to move forward with have been in some ways slam dunk. Most have gotten reasonably good at seeing what pilots are going to be moving forward, develop the governance structures that are helping them make those decisions, and then, you know, scaling off the technologies that can have an impact either on the clinician time savings, well being or accuracy on the operational side too. But what the industry hasn't really solved for yet is what comes next, how they can move move AI from that demo phase into becoming really part of the fabric of those operational workflows and continuing to make more sophisticated governance structures as AI evolves. And one of those big reasons why initiatives right now are stalling a bit is because some of these hospitals and systems have tried to move too fast with the AI technology and skip the fundamentals. In some ways, health system CIOs I talked to said basically that the biggest myth in AI right now is that the technology is a solution in and of itself. But they argued you can't really deploy an AI model and expect transformation. You have to really define the problem first, who is being affected, what success looks like, whether your data is even ready to really take on a larger model or the large language models and things that are coming through on the data front. So without the foundation, organizations typically then will generate impressive demos, but they can't bring it to meaningful results on a large scale because there's too much going on and they aren't able to meaningfully affect that change. And so a lot of the leaders today are now looking at what they call kind of an invisible graveyard of AI where they've implemented something that looked like a great idea and on a small scale and then they bring it to everybody and you know, the organization wasn't ready, the data wasn't ready, and really the change never takes off and it doesn't get implemented into the clinical workflows. And so it's almost never because the algorithm doesn't work, it's just simply that it didn't fit as well into the broader workflows of the broader organization. And so the team largely abandons it. And obviously that's not the outcome that anybody wants, whether it's the organization investing in it or the companies that are working closely with that. And so really, in 2026, large health systems are trying to move past these pilots in having lots of different pilots going on and really focusing in on the things that have the best opportunities to build the infrastructure where they can manage AI at scale, monitor that AI model drift, and then exercise real discipline about what gets deployed and when. So it's just a really interesting time right now for AI and healthcare. In some ways more restrained, but in other ways still, you know, building towards more opportunities as the technology evolves in the future.
- [08:59]
A
Thank you so much. And so it's a constant evolution in sort of the technology space and how health systems are using it. Laura, you've been really involved in leading the agenda for the Beckers Healthcare annual meeting coming up. I know we've got speakers, celebrity speakers like Mark Cuban and President Bush and Troy Aikman and quarterback Fernando Mendoza. But what are you most excited about and what are some of the things you're most interested in hearing about at the annual meeting this year?
- [09:29]
B
Oh, gosh, that's such a great question. And there's a lot I'm excited about for the annual meeting. I think we've got some really, really dynamic sessions with leaders who are at the forefront of strateg trying to figure out how they're going to manage a lot of the changes upcoming in really, truly transforming health care, whether they're looking at some of the ways that they're bringing more value for their teams as well as their patients, different types of partnerships and collaborations and really, I think it might be feel overstated, but making healthcare more of a team sport and how they're building a strategy around the dynamic times we're in the uncertainty, but teams that can really be more dynamic, be more nimble and really make the patient experience better. And so those are the things that I'm really interested and excited about. And hearing from leaders, CEOs and CFOs of the top health systems, as well as kind of boots on the ground with rural healthcare too, is just such a fascinating time right now. There's a lot of transformation happening in that space and it'll be just so cool to hear from those leaders of how they're really meeting the challenges of the day, thinking about the next year, the next five years, and putting themselves in a position to be successful in that space. So that's what I'm most excited about.
- [10:50]
A
Fantastic. No, it's fascinating to watch how systems are sort of transforming themselves to. To sort of figure out how to mix technology and physicians and nurses to deliver the best care possible and really take care of our population. Laura, as always, you do a remarkable job. I'm so thankful for you joining us today on the Backers Healthcare podcast and more importantly, for your employees, amazing leadership. Thank you to Laura Teardup for being with us today.
- [11:15]
B
Thank you, Scott. It's such a pleasure.