About a quarter of Georgia's hospitals received top marks for safety, according to a new report.
The findings — published by The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that looks at safety in health care — gave 19 of Georgia’s 74 hospitals an “A” grade for safety.
The grades in the bi-annual report are based on 28 measures that look at categories such as physician staffing, staff responsiveness and falls and trauma.
The numerical score is calculated for more than 2,600 hospitals nationwide, then converted into a letter grade.
The new findings mark two decades since the Institute of Medicine's To Err Is Human report, which found that nearly 100,000 lives are lost every year due to 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 statement. "It also allows us to better track progress. Encouragingly, we are seeing fewer deaths from the preventable errors we monitor in our grading process."
Of the hospitals graded nationwide, 33% received an “A” grade in overall safety.
The Georgia hospitals that received an “A” in the report are:
AdventHealth Gordon, Calhoun
Cartersville Medical Center, Cartersville
Coliseum Medical Centers, Macon
Crisp Regional Hospital, Cordele
Emory St. Joseph's Hospital, Atlanta
Fairview Park Hospital, Dublin
Northside Hospital Forsyth, Cumming
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Albany
Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside, Columbus
Piedmont Fayette Hospital, Fayetteville
Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta
Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, Jasper
Piedmont Newnan Hospital, Newnan
Piedmont Newton Hospital, Covington
Redmond Regional Medical Center, Rome
Wellstar Douglas Hospital, Douglasville
Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, Marietta
Wellstar Paulding Hospital, Hiram
Other findings include:
- The five states with the highest percent of "A" grades were: Maine, Utah, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina.
- Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota have no facilities with an "A" grade.
- About 8% of hospitals nationwide received a "D" grade, while under 1% were graded "F."
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