Best hospitals in Georgia: 7 hospitals awarded for patient experience

Several Georgia hospitals were recognized in the annual Healthgrades patient safety excellence and outstanding patient excellence awards released during 2019's National Hospital Week.

“Patient safety is strongly associated with high quality care,” Healthgrades notes on its website. And “patient experience measures tell you how patients felt about the care they received at the hospital and if they would recommend the hospital.”

To be eligible for the patient safety excellence award, hospitals must rank among the top 80% for clinical quality based on procedures evaluated using Medicare data and must have zero occurrences of foreign objects left during a surgery or procedure, among several other factors. In 2019, 460 hospitals across the country achieved this award, placing them among the top 10% of all short-term acute care hospitals reporting patient safety data. Twelve of the 460 facilities are in Georgia.

According to Healthgrades, “on average, 127,667 patient events could have been avoided if all hospitals performed similarly to award recipients on each of the 14 patient safety indicators evaluated.”

The second award, dedicated to patient experience, is based on patient survey data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The survey specifically asks patients to rate areas of hospital care, such as communication with doctors, nurses and more based on if the measured action took place, and if so, how frequently the patient perceived the measured action to take place, according to the report.

Seven Georgia hospitals made the cut.