The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services is reversing a recent decision to stop making data on hospital-acquired conditions (HAC's), such as retained objects after surgery and transfusion of the wrong blood type, publicly available on its website. After reporting on these events for several years, CMS quietly stopped making these data available, bowing to pressure from hospitals, arguing that the events were rare and that rates of events could be misleading. The Leapfrog Group, with backbone from its regional Roll-outs, including GPBCH, argued that the public has the right to know when these events take place, and where they take place. The HAC data also enters into Leapfrog's calculation of the Hospital Safety Score, and important, consumer-friendly measure of overall patient safety provided by a hospital www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. CMS' decision to continue reporting on HAC's is a major victory for the purchaser community. "I commend CMS for their commitment to transparency," said Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder, "This is good news for the public."