Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital is receiving national recognition. The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit healthcare ratings organization, named the facility a Top Teaching Hospital. Piedmont Athens is the only hospital in Georgia and one of 53 nationally to earn the designation.
“It’s a very well-known fact that it’s hard to achieve top quality and safety rankings in a teaching hospital, just because of the very nature of what a teaching hospital is,” said Heather Alexander, the director of quality and patient safety. “This was a very nice recognition and validation.”
Each year, the highest-performing hospitals on the Leapfrog Hospital Service are recognized.
The facility also earned an “A” grade from the organization, the only hospital in its 17-county service area to receive an ‘A’ for the fall of 2018.
“We have been striving to achieve a leap from A for about four years,” Alexander said.
Piedmont Athens Regional was one of two hospitals in Georgia to receive top hospital recognition – the other named a Leapfrog Top Rural Hospital.
“I think there were 16,000 hospitals that submitted a full survey, and less than three percent were given a top hospital designation,” Alexander said.
