Atlanta Hospitals Rank Low in Safety

Piedmont Hospital scored right at that average. Piedmont’s Chief Quality Officer, Dr. Mark Cohen, says the scores are a driver to improve. He points to the highest score nationwide, a 74 scored by a hospital in Wisconsin.

“A few years ago, the highest in the country would not have been a 74. It would have been much lower,” said Dr. Cohen. “And it’s the efforts that all of the hospitals are making up, but clearly we all have way more distance to go.”  

To develop its scores, Consumer Reports measured more than 2,000 hospitals for four criteria including rate of blood infection in ICUs, number of re-admissions for certain serious conditions with 30 days, the frequency with which patients were informed about new medications, and the hospitals’ use of electronic records to track patients’ health history and status. The data comes from the hospitals’ own reporting to government agencies in 2011.

Grady Memorial Hospital scored 27 out of 100. Consumer Reports Senior Editor Joel Keehn told WABE, “For Grady Memorial, it looks like they had 53 blood stream infections in just over 9000 days of ICU. And that is 122% worse than the national rates for similar hospitals.”

Keehn calls the national average of just 49 alarming and says Grady’s especially low score could indicate the hospital needs more resources. When asked for comment, Grady officials wouldn’t grant an interview but released a statement that said, in part, “The health system has made great improvements over the last year in many of the areas cited in the magazine’s report and we continue to work towards attaining the best outcomes possible for our patients.”