Georgia Hospitals Ranked By Safety Grades: Report

GEORGIA — Out of the 74 hospitals in Georgia recently ranked on safety efforts, 19 hospitals received an "A" grade in hospital safety, according to new fall 2019 ratings released Thursday by the Leapfrog Group.

The nonprofit group found that of the more than 2,600 hospitals graded in the country, 33 percent earned an "A" grade, a 1 percent increase from the last round of safety grades, released in Spring 2019.

The Leapfrog Group explains that its rating system is focused entirely on errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The hospital safety grades are released by the nonprofit group twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Maine, Utah, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina had the highest percentage of hospitals that received an "A" grade. Three states — Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota — did not have a single hospital that received an "A" grade.

Here are the Georgia hospitals that scored an "A" or "B" by the Leapfrog Group:

• AdventHealth Gordon, Calhoun, A
• Cartersville Medical Center, Cartersville, A
• Coliseum Medical Centers, Macon, A
• Crisp Regional Hospital, Cordele, A
• Emory St. Joseph's Hospital, Atlanta, A
• Fairview Park Hospital, Dublin, A
• Northside Hospital Forsyth, Cumming, A
• Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Albany, A
• Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside, Columbus, A
• Piedmont Fayette Hospital, Fayetteville, A
• Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta, A
• Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, Jasper, A
• Piedmont Newnan Hospital, Newnan, A
• Piedmont Newton Hospital, Covington, A
• Redmond Regional Medical Center, Rome, A
• Wellstar Douglas Hospital, Douglasville, A
• Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, Marietta, A
• Wellstar Paulding Hospital, Hiram, A
• Coffee Regional Medical Center, Douglas, B
• Doctors Hospital of Augusta, Augusta
• East Georgia Regional Medical Center, Statesboro
• Eastside Medical Center, Snellville
• Emory Johns Creek Hospital, Johns Creek
• Emory University Hospital, Atlanta
• Floyd Medical Center, Rome
• Hamilton Medical Center, Dalton
• Houston Medical Center, Warner Robins
• Memorial Satilla Health, Waycross
• Northside Hospital Atlanta, Atlanta
• Northside Hospital Cherokee, Canton
• Phoebe Sumter Medical Center, Americus
• Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center, Athens
• Piedmont Henry Hospital, Stockbridge
• South Georgia Medical Center, Valdosta
• Southern Regional Medical Center, Riverdale
• St. Joseph's Hospital, Savannah
• St. Mary's Health Care System, Inc., Athens
• St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital, Lavonia
• Tanner Medical Center of Carrollton, Carrollton
• Tanner Medical Center of Villa Rica, Villa Rica
• Tift Regional Medical Center, Tifton
• Union General Hospital, Blairsville
• University Hospital, Augusta
• Wellstar Cobb Hospital, Austell
• Wellstar West Georgia Medical Center, Lagrange

The release of the Fall 2019 safety grades coincides with the 20th anniversary of a published report that revealed nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year because of preventable medical errors.

“In stark contrast to 20 years ago, we’re now able to pinpoint where the problems are, and that allows us to grade hospitals,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a press release. “It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process.”

Leapfrog assigns "A," "B," "C," "D" and "F" letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes performance measures taken from federal government data and the group’s own hospital survey to “produce a single letter grade representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.” The group relies on a panel of experts to select the measures used in the methodology and to develop a scoring system. (You can read more about the letter grades here.)