The Leapfrog Group, one of the leading analysts of healthcare quality and safety, this month announced that it will begin issuing ratings for ambulatory surgery centers (ASC), in addition to the ratings it already assigns hospitals.

The group’s annual survey of providers will seek apples-to-apples quality and safety comparison data from hospital-based outpatient surgery centers through a special data collection section that will be included beginning next year, reported HealthcareITNews‘s Mike Miliard.

The move comes amid intensifying scrutiny of ASCs’ safety and of their reporting practices. Leapfrog hopes to find data that will either demonstrate or disprove allegations that typically cheaper ASC-based care is substandard, relative to hospital-based outpatient surgical care.

“The vast majority of surgeries in the U.S. are performed in outpatient or ambulatory settings, but there are almost no independent data about the safety and quality of this care,” Leapfrog’s president and CEO Leah Binder wrote in a company statement. “This leaves patients at risk without the information they need to select the best place for their care.”

“We’re confident that, given the opportunity, hospitals and ASCs will be transparent in voluntarily reporting their performance, just like the nearly 2,000 hospitals that report on their inpatient quality today,” she explained.

Read the whole story here, in HealthcareITNews.