Leah Binder

President and Chief Executive Officer

The Leapfrog Group

Bio

Since 2008, Leah Binder has served as President & CEO of The Leapfrog Group, an award-winning national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., representing employers and other purchasers of health care calling for improved safety and quality in hospitals. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and other publications, and consistently cited among the most influential people and top women in healthcare and patient safety.

Under her leadership, The Leapfrog Group launched the Hospital Safety Grade, which assigns letter grades on the safety of general hospitals across the country. She fostered groundbreaking innovation in transparency and payment policy through the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey, which sets high standards for hospital quality and publicly reports information available from no other source. In 2020 Leapfrog will begin rating outpatient surgery and Ambulatory Surgery Centers as well. Leapfrog’s leadership is widely credited as key to significant advances in health care delivery and health value. Analysts find that at least 40,000 lives have been saved in each of the past two years from the galvanizing focus on safety brought by the Hospital Safety Grade. Other movements sparked and spurred by Leapfrog under Leah’s leadereship include reductions in early elective deliveries and other maternity improvements, improvements in medication safety, reductions in infections, and the acceleration of health care transparency.

Leah is a frequent speaker at events across the country. She serves on numerous national boards and advisory committees such as the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchasing Coalitions, AARP’s Champions for Nursing, the National Board of Medical Examiners, the NQF MAP Coordinating Council, and Knowledge To Practice.

Before joining Leapfrog, Leah was vice president for the nationally noted Franklin Community Health Network in Farmington, Maine; and prior to that served as senior policy advisor in the Office of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City. An initiative she assisted with in New York allowed small businesses to offer more health plan choice to their employees, and that is still in successful operation today at the Northeast Business Group on Health.

 

She started her career doing public policy and communications for the National League for Nursing. She has a bachelor’s in Politics from Brandeis and two master’s degrees from University of Pennsylvania, one from the Annenberg School for Communications and the other from the Fels Institute of Government. She lives near Washington, DC, with her husband, Sam, and two children, Henry, 21, and K.C., 1

Leah is Speaking At

THE INTERSECTION OF INNOVATION, TRANSPARENCY, AND QUALITY TO TRULY TRANSFORM HEALTHCARE

Wednesday, June 21

8:10 AM - 8:45 AM