GA’s Safest Hospitals: Fall 2023 Leapfrog Group Ratings Released

GEORGIA — Hospitals in Georgia and nationwide made significant improvements in preventing a “disturbing” increase in hospital infections during the coronavirus pandemic, The Leapfrog Group said with the release Monday of its Fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grades Report.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections. Overall, the report shows hospitals significantly reduced infections after the pandemic spike, but patient-reported experiences declined for the second year in a row.

Among 80 Georgia hospitals evaluated in the report, 24 received the gold-standard “A” safety grade. Another 17 earned a “B,” 34 earned a “C” and 5 earned a “D.” Zero hospitals received an F.

Georgia hospitals earning “A” grades are:

• Wellstar West Georgia Medical Center, Lagrange
• Piedmont Augusta Hospital, Augusta
• Wellstar Kennestone Medical Center, Marietta
• Memorial Health University Medical Center, Savannah
• Wellstar Paulding Hospital, Hiram
• Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow, Winder
• Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center, Rome
• Emory St. Joseph's Hospital, Atlanta
• Colquitt Regional Medical Center, Moultrie
• Fairview Park Hospital, Dublin
• Memorial Health Meadows Hospital, Vidalia
• Piedmont Macon Medical Center, Macon
• Southern Regional Medical Center, Riverdale
• AdventHealth Redmond, Rome
• Doctors Hospital of Augusta, Augusta
• Piedmont Macon North Hospital, Macon
• Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, Jasper
• Emory Johns Creek Hospital, Johns Creek
• Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside, Columbus
• Northeast Georgia Medical Center Braselton, Braselton
• Tift Regional Medical Center, Tifton
• Memorial Satilla Health, Waycross
• Coffee Regional Medical Center, Douglas
• Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center, Athens

The Leapfrog Group grades hospitals twice a year. In the fall report, the first report using post-pandemic data, 30 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an “A,” 24 percent earned a “B,” 39 percent earned a “C,” 7 percent earned a “D,” and fewer than 1 percent earned an “F.”

The 10 states with the highest number of “A” hospitals are Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Connecticut, Montana, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.

States that had no “A” hospitals are Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware and North Dakota, as well as Washington, D.C.

More than 85 percent of hospitals saw decreases in the three most dangerous infections — MRSA, central-line bloodstream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

• 19 percent improved in all three infection measures;
• 66 percent improved in at least one infection measure;
• 16 percent continued to worsen or did not improve.

“Now that we have pre- and post-pandemic data for patient safety measures, we are encouraged by the improvement in infections and applaud hospitals for reversing the disturbing infection spike we saw during the pandemic,” Leapfrog president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

However, Binder said the continued decline in patient experiences is “deeply concerning.” Hospitals in all states have seen a significant decline in reported patient experiences since the fall of 2021, the report said.

Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

Patch is working to get comment from few of the hospitals.