When it comes to keeping patients safe, Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton has been doing its homework.
The hospital is among only 19 in Georgia to earn an “A” rating for patient safety on the Spring 2015 Hospital Safety Score.
“Once again, we see that our efforts at achieving the highest possible level of care are placing us among the nation’s top healthcare providers,” said Loy Howard, president and CEO of Tanner Health System. “We are proud that our commitment to being among the nation’s top healthcare providers continues to earn Tanner national distinction, and we are grateful for the outstanding work that our medical staff and team of healthcare professionals do to deliver this extraordinary level of care.”
The Leapfrog Group, which publishes the Hospital Safety Score twice a year in spring and fall, analyzed more than 2,500 hospitals from across the country to develop the score, providing a letter grade based on how each scored on 28 publicly available measures of hospital safety. Those measures include preventing infections, errors, injuries and medication mix-ups. The firm used data from its own survey, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the annual survey of the American Hospital Association.
Throughout Georgia, 17 hospitals earned B ratings, 29 earned C ratings, two earned D ratings and two earned an F rating. Sixty-nine Georgia hospitals were included in the Leapfrog Group’s scoring.
The Leapfrog Group’s hospital safety scores grade general acute care hospitals on a range of criteria that determine how safe the hospitals are for patients. The scores provide a single, consumer-friendly composite score that is published as a letter grade.
Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton was the only one of the health system’s hospitals evaluated by the Leapfrog Group. The hospital previously earned “A” ratings in 2012-2014. The firm did not calculate grades for critical access hospitals, such as Tanner’s Higgins General Hospital in Bremen, or behavioral health hospitals like Willowbrooke at Tanner in Villa Rica. Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica also was not included, as the facility lacked the volume to report sufficient data for the Leapfrog Group’s evaluation.
“Our emphasis on a team approach to care — with physicians, nurses and others at every level of the organization — means that we have multiple providers with an eye on each patient’s wellbeing,” said Howard. “This is an approach that’s catching on elsewhere in the country, but its early implementation here at Tanner has placed us at the forefront in terms of quality, safety and even patient experience and satisfaction.”
The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization established in 2000 to advocate for improved patient safety throughout the nation’s hospitals. The Hospital Safety Score is a public service available at no cost online at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. A full analysis of the data and methodology used is also available on the Hospital Safety Score Web site.
For more information on Tanner Health System, including how it compares to other regional hospitals in key quality measures or to find a physician on Tanner’s medical staff, visit www.tanner.org.
