Atlanta (Nov. 7, 2019) — Six of Piedmont Healthcare’s 11 hospitals received “A” grades in The Leapfrog Group’s Fall 2019 Hospital Safety Grade, making it the safest healthcare system in Georgia with more A grades than any other healthcare system in the state.

Over the past three years, Piedmont has reduced Hospital-Acquired Infections by 69 percent. Within the last three years, each of the six Piedmont legacy hospitals (those that have been in the system and on Piedmont’s Electronic Health Record for more than 18 months) have received at least one “A” grade from Leapfrog.

The Leapfrog Group is an independent national watchdog organization driven by employers and other purchasers of healthcare committed to improving healthcare quality and safety for consumers and purchasers. The Safety Grade assigns an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade to all general hospitals across the country based on their performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other harms to patients in their care.

“I am proud of our record on quality and safety and our work to reduce Hospital-Acquired Infections, in particular, has helped to make our hospitals the safest in Georgia for our patients,” said Kevin Brown, president and CEO, Piedmont Healthcare. “The Leapfrog Group grades for our hospitals are a validation of our strong record in this area and I am grateful for the hard work put in by our providers and our employees to achieve these grades.”

The Piedmont hospitals that earned A grades were:

• Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, which received its fourth consecutive A grade. Piedmont Atlanta, home to Piedmont Heart Institute, Piedmont Cancer and Piedmont Transplant Institute, is the system’s flagship hospital and had 288,796 outpatient encounters, 26,963 inpatient admissions and 54,248 emergency department visits during Piedmont’s most recent fiscal year (July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019).

• Piedmont Fayette Hospital, which received its fourth A grade in the past five terms.

• Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, which earned its ninth consecutive A grade. Piedmont Mountainside has not had a Hospital-Acquired Infection since November 2017 and has gone almost two years without a serious safety event.

• Piedmont Newnan Hospital, which earned its 10th consecutive A grade. Piedmont Newnan also received the Patient Safety Excellence Award from Healthgrades in 2017 and 2019, placing Piedmont Newnan Hospital in the top 10 percent in the nation for patient safety.

• Piedmont Newton Hospital, which received an A grade for the fifth time in the last seven 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.

• Piedmont Columbus Northside Campus, which earned its third consecutive A grade as a member of the Piedmont system. It joined Piedmont on March 1, 2018.

“‘A’ hospitals show us their leadership is protecting patients from preventable medical harm and error,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “It takes genuine commitment at every level – from clinicians to administrators to the board of directors – and we congratulate the teams who have worked so hard to earn this A.”

Developed under the guidance of a national Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,600 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.