The Leapfrog Group was founded by Business Roundtable in 2000 to educate employers and providers on methods to reduce medical errors and improve quality in health care. In 2002, Leapfrog was officially established as a separate non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization with funding from Business Roundtable. Leapfrog is a voluntary program in which employers encourage providers to improve patient safety and customer value. Under Leapfrog, employers agree to apply principles encouraging more stringent patient safety measures when purchasing health care benefits and services. It is estimated that Leapfrog's initiatives may save up to 58,000 lives and prevent up to 522,000 medication errors each year.

Leapfrog's mission encompasses four ideas:

• American health care remains far below obtainable levels of basic safety and overall customer value.

• The health care industry would improve more rapidly if purchasers better recognized and rewarded superior safety and overall value.

• Voluntary adherence to purchasing principles by a critical mass of America's largest employers would further encourage other purchasers to join.

• These principles should not only champion superior overall value, but also focus on a handful of specific innovations offering improvements in basic patient safety.