News Releases

February 2, 2007
HealthGrades ranks WGMC among the best in Georgia

West Georgia Medical Center has been ranked among the top 10 hospitals in Georgia for joint replacement surgery and gastrointestinal (GI) surgery, according to a comprehensive study released by HealthGrades, the nation’s leading healthcare ratings company. In addition, WGHS was rated five-star for total hip replacement, GI surgery, cholecystectomy and treatment of pancreatitis.

Earning the HealthGrades Top 10 rankings and the 5-star ratings attests to the commitment to excellence at West Georgia Health System, WGHS President/CEO Jerry Fulks pointed out. “The rankings are the result of the commitment of our physicians, nurses, technicians and other healthcare workers to provide excellent healthcare. The care provided to our patients, as indicated by the recognition for our orthopedic and gastrointestinal services, can be found throughout our health system. It is what our patients expect, and it is our goal to not only meet, but also exceed their expectations,” Fulks said.

As part of its ninth annual Hospital Quality in America Study, HealthGrades independently analyzed more than 5,000 hospitals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for its 2007 ratings, objectively assessing their clinical outcomes and quality.  The 40 million hospitalization records utilized in the assessment are publicly available and licensed from the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The HealthGrades ratings take into account varying degrees of patient severity from hospital to hospital and measure whether patient outcomes for each of more than two dozen procedures and diagnoses are better than expected (5-Star), as expected (3-Star) or worse than expected (1-Star). 

“Consumers continue to ask for more and better information to help them in their health care decision making,” said Samantha Collier, M.D., HealthGrades’ vice president of medical affairs. “Our analysis provides an apples-to-apples comparison of hospital performance by procedure or diagnosis, and it is evident there is significant variance between individual hospitals.  For WGMC to rank among the state’s best reflects the efforts of everybody in the organization, and should be very comforting to area residents.”

The 2007 HealthGrades ratings for all hospitals nationwide are available on HealthGrades’ consumer web site, located at www.healthgrades.com.  More than three million individuals and employees of more than 125 major employers visit the HealthGrades web site every month to access quality information about hospitals, nursing homes and physicians.  HealthGrades also provides consumers and payers with detailed assessments of hospitals’ patient-safety outcomes, based on indicators developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.