Seven of Piedmont Healthcare’s 11 hospitals received “A” grades in The Leapfrog Group’s Spring 2019 Hospital Safety Grade, making it the safest healthcare system in Georgia with more A grades than any other healthcare system in the state.
 
“We are proud of our record on quality, which our talented employees have worked hard to attain,” said Kevin Brown, president and CEO, Piedmont Healthcare. “Quality, safety and service lie at the heart of Piedmont’s strategic vision of providing high-quality, patient-centered care and it is great to see us delivering on that.”
 
The Piedmont hospitals that earned A grades were:
 
·         Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center, which serves as the system’s east clinical hub, received an A grade for the second consecutive period. Previously, it had gone eight report card periods, a span of four years, without receiving an A. Piedmont Athens, which was the only facility in Georgia named a Top Teaching Hospital by Leapfrog last December, joined the Piedmont system in 2016.
 
·         Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, which received its third consecutive A grade. Piedmont Atlanta, home to Piedmont Heart Institute, Piedmont Cancer and Piedmont Transplant Institute, has the highest Case Mix Index (CMI) of any community hospital in the nation, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data. This means Piedmont Atlanta takes care of the sickest patients of any non-academic medical center in the United States, ranking in the top 10 for all hospitals.
 
·         Piedmont Fayette Hospital, which received its third A grade in the past four terms.
 
·         Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, which earned its eighth consecutive A grade. Piedmont Mountainside has not had a Hospital-Acquired Infection since November 2017 and has gone 490 days without a serious safety event.
 
·         Piedmont Newnan Hospital, which earned its ninth consecutive A grade.
 
·         Piedmont Newton Hospital, which received an A grade for the fourth time in the last six reports. Piedmont Newton joined the Piedmont system on Oct. 1, 2015, and roughly 13 months later – after integrating Piedmont’s safety practices and hard-wiring clinical protocols through its electronic medical record – the hospital went from a D to an A. Piedmont Newton was named Small Hospital of the Year in 2018 by the Georgia Association of Community Hospitals and has gone 811 days without a Serious Safety Event.
 
·         Piedmont Columbus Northside Campus, which earned its second consecutive A grade as a member of the Piedmont system. It joined Piedmont on March 1, 2018.

The Leapfrog Safety Grade, which is released twice a year, is a complex quality rating with 28 different quality measures, each with different weightings and gathered from different sources and time periods. This makes it especially difficult – and special – when a hospital is able to make significant improvement.