When you need medical care, it’s good to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing your hospital holds itself to a high standard of care and carries a commitment to patient safety. The Hospital Safety Score system provides consumers with information about the hospitals in their areas. The ranking system accounts for 30 metrics, including error rate, cleanliness, patient satisfaction, and more.
How are Hospitals Ranked?
The Hospital Safety Score uses two main categories to create ranks – structural and procedural measures and outcome measures. Surveys issued to the hospital staff provide information about how hospitals operate on the procedural and structural levels as well as how employees feel about their work environments. The hospital staff answers many questions concerning the workplace, such as:
- Staffing
- Leadership structure
- Workplace culture
- Teamwork and skill building
- Risk mitigation
- Nursing
- Medication reconciliation
- Staff responsiveness
- Workplace communication
- Discharge information
Outcome measures weigh hard data concerning patient care. Hospitals are required to keep records of injuries sustained on site as well as any serious infections contracted by patients. These records include figures for:
- The number of slip and falls and trauma
- The number of air embolism cases
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus cases
- difficile cases
- Pressure ulcers
- Surgical deaths
- Postoperative respiratory failures
- Surgical errors and accidents, including punctures and lacerations
These are only a few of the measurements used to determine a hospital’s grade. The hospital’s willingness to participate in the surveys and report its information also affects the final grade. In the state of Georgia, the highest-rated hospitals for safety include the following A-grade medical centers:
- Southeast Georgia Health System Camden Campus, St. Mary’s
- Wayne Memorial Hospital, Jesup
- University Hospital, Augusta
- Mayo Clinic Health System, Waycross
- Fairview Park Hospital, Dublin
- Tift Regional Medical Center, Tifton
- Mary’s Health Care System Inc., Athens
- Houston Medical Center, Warner Robins
- Colquitt Regional Medical Center, Moultrie
- Perry Hospital, Perry
- Coliseum Northside Hospital, Macon
- Emory University Hospital, Atlanta
- Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, Jasper
- Piedmont Newnan Hospital, Newnan
- Gordon Hospital, Calhoun
- West Georgia Medical Center, Lagrange
- Tanner Medical Center, Carrollton
Things to Remember About Hospitals
If you need to go to the hospital for any type of procedure, it’s vital to remember your rights. Medical professionals take an oath to do no harm to their patients and do everything in their power to provide the best medical care possible to every patient. Unfortunately, there are roughly 440,000 deaths every year due to hospital errors. You need to know what your options are if you are injured or contract an infection at a hospital.
Medical malpractice is a serious issue, and hospitals and medical staff members who are negligent in the care they provide need to be accountable for the damage they cause. The Savannah injury attorneys at Roden + Love LLC are proud to serve clients in a variety of cases throughout the state. If you have any concerns about the care you received during a recent hospital visit, reach out and contact us for a case evaluation.
We’ll go over the details of your situation and let you know what your options are. Establishing negligence is the first step in winning a medical malpractice case. You must be able to prove in court that there was a patient-doctor relationship with the health care provider in question. Next, you must show that the provider acted without a reasonable degree of care during your treatment. Finally, you must be able to prove that you sustained an injury or illness as a direct result of these actions (or, in some cases, inaction). Every case is different, but Eric Roden and Tyler Love of Roden + Love LLC are fully dedicated to limiting stress for our clients and securing the best possible outcome in every case.