19 GA Hospitals Earn 'A' Grade In New Safety Ranking

GEORGIA — A new hospital safety report released Thursday shows 24.1 percent of hospitals in Georgia earned “A” grades based on their ability to protect their patients from often preventable harm.

Among those hospitals cited in The Leapfrog Group’s Spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grades, 10 percent in Georgia were designated “Straight A” hospitals for sustaining their top scores for five or more consecutive grading periods. Nationwide, 346 hospitals — 12 percent of all eligible hospitals — were named to this select group.

According to the safety grades, two Georgia hospitals received a 'D,' 29 got a 'C' and 27 scored a ‘B.’

The biannual reports from the independent hospital safety watchdog group assigned “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” grades to all U.S. general hospitals based on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. These mistakes harm one in four hospital patients and cause as many as 250,000 deaths every year.

Georgia ranks 35th among all states for the percentage of hospitals receiving “A” grades in the spring 2025 report card, the same as in the fall.

Even more elite are 11 hospitals that have earned A grades or all 27 evaluation rounds over the 13 years of the report card. They include Mayo Clinic-Phoenix in Arizona; French Hospital Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center in California; Endeavor Health Elmhurst Hospital, Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital and University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois; Saint Anne’s Hospital (Massachusetts); Inova Loudoun Hospital, Sentara CarePlex Hospital and Sentara Leigh Hospital in Virginia; and Virginia Mason Medical Center in Washington.

The elite “Straight A” hospitals in Georgia cited for consistently high safety performance are:

• Wellstar Paulding Hospital
• Colquitt Regional Medical Center
• Fairview Park Hospital
• Piedmont Macon North Hospital
• Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside
• Tift Regional Medical Center
• Coffee Regional Medical Center
• Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center

Leah Binder, the president and chief executive of The Leapfrog Group, said “A” grades should be a source of pride for hospitals, but she warned them not to “rest on that laurel.”

“Patient safety is a relentless, never-ending quest to put patients first,” she said in a news release. “That’s why Leapfrog is highlighting the hospitals across the U.S. that have earned Straight A’s for over two years. Sustaining an A over multiple years reflects a deep-rooted commitment to patient safety.”

Other “A” hospitals in Georgia are:

• Tanner Medical Center of Villa Rica
• Wellstar West Georgia Medical Center
• Piedmont Newton Hospital
• East Georgia Regional Medical Center
• Piedmont Hospital
• Memorial Health Meadows Hospital
• Southeast Georgia Health System -Camden Campus
• Piedmont Henry Hospital
• Piedmont Fayette Hospital
• Martin Army Community Hospital
• Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center

You can see the full rankings, including the hospitals that scored lower than an 'A,' here.

The top five states with the highest share of Straight A hospitals since spring 2023 are Utah (29 percent), Connecticut (29 percent), New Jersey (27 percent), Rhode Island (22 percent) and Virginia (20 percent).

States with no Straight A hospitals for consistent performance over the past five grading cycles are Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming and Washington, D.C.

The states with the highest percentage of A Grades for spring 2025 are Utah, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, South Carolina and Virginia.