Gwinnett Hospitals All Score 'C' For Safety Thru Pandemic: Report

GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — None of Gwinnett County’s hospitals scored better than a “C” in safety ratings released last week by a nationwide non-profit watchdog group.

The grades from the Leapfrog Group for Northside Hospital Gwinnett, Northside Hospital Duluth and Eastside Medical Center represent how well each facility protected patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections over the last six months. Leapfrog released its latest ratings Thursday.

Leapfrog grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from "A" to "F" based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections. More than 2,700 general, acute-care U.S. hospitals were assessed for Leapfrog's Spring Safety Grades.

While it’s true that the Gwinnett hospitals were rated during some of the worst months of the coronavirus pandemic, their grades continue a trend for all three.

The last time Northside Gwinnett in Lawrenceville — long known as Gwinnett Medical Center and the county’s largest hospital — scored better than a “C” was in the spring of 2018. Its sister hospital, Northside Hospital Duluth, fared the same.

Only Eastside Medical Center had better recent scores. Leapfrog graded the Snellville hospital “A” for fall 2018 and spring 2019 before dropping it to a “B” in fall of 2019. Eastside scored only a “C” throughout 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was at its peak.

Other hospitals near Gwinnett County that were graded include:

• Northeast Georgia Medical Center Braselton — C
• Piedmont Walton, Monroe — B
• Emory Johns Creek Hospital — C
• Piedmont Rockdale Hospital, Conyers — C

Piedmont Healthcare, which owns the Conyers hospital, announced plans Monday to buy Eastside and three other Georgia hospitals from HCA Healthcare. The purchase is set to close in July.

In Georgia:

• 24 hospitals received an A grade.
• 19 hospitals received a B grade.
• 30 hospitals received a C grade.
• 3 hospitals received a D grade.

Across all states, highlights of findings from the spring 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an "A," 24 percent received a "B," 35 percent received a "C," 7 percent received a "D," and less than 1 percent received an "F."

Five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals are Massachusetts, Idaho, Maine, Virginia, and North Carolina.

There were no "A" hospitals in South Dakota or North Dakota.

To determine each state's grade, Leapfrog used up to 28 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. When averaged, performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries.

Leapfrog estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at "A" hospitals, 50,000 lives at other facilities would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is peer-reviewed by a panel of national experts, and the Leapfrog Group receives guidance from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.

RELATED: Eastside Medical Center To Be Sold To Atlanta-based Piedmont