Speaker Category: Who Pays for Medical Errors?

Leah Binder is President & CEO of The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit based in Washington, DC, representing employers and other purchasers of health care calling for improved safety and quality in hospitals. She is a regular blogger for Forbes.com, the Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal expert forum. She has been named on Modern Healthcare’s national list of the top 25 women in health care in 2013 as well as their annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare since 2009.

Under her leadership, The Leapfrog Group launched the Hospital Safety Score, which assigns letter grades assessing the safety of general hospitals across the country. She has also fostered groundbreaking innovations in the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey, including partnerships to eliminate early elective deliveries, central line-associated bloodstream infections and safe use of health technology.

She sits on numerous national boards and councils, and was cited by Becker’s as one of the nation’s leading experts leading the field of patient safety in 2013.
Her boards include the Institute of Medicine Collaboration on Patient Engagement, the Maternity Care Shared Decision Making Initiative National Advisory Council, the Leadership Advisory Board of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, and the National Priorities Partnership Board.

Prior to her position at The Leapfrog Group, Ms. Binder spent eight years as vice president at Franklin Community Health Network, an award-winning rural hospital network in Farmington, Maine. She previously worked as a senior policy advisor for the Office of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City and started her career at the National League for Nursing, where she handled policy and communications for more than 6 years.

Ms. Binder has a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and two master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, one from the Annenberg School of Communication and the other from the Fels Institute of Government.