Three Tanner Health System hospitals have been named to the “Top Georgia Hospitals 2012” list published in the December issue of Georgia Trend magazine.

Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton is No. 2 on the top 20 list of medium-sized hospitals; Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica is No. 4 on the top 20 list of small hospitals; and Higgins General Hospital in Bremen is No. 1 on the top 16 list of critical access hospitals.

Georgia Trend ranked the hospitals based on information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The rankings consider quality of care, patient satisfaction, mortality and re-admission statistics and data on hospital-acquired infections and conditions.

Loy Howard, president/CEO of Tanner Health System, said these rankings help area residents feel confident in choosing Tanner for medical care.

“People have their choice, especially with Atlanta being particularly close by,” said Howard. “Every positive accolade we earn, nationally and statewide, is further validation that our patients are making an educated decision in choosing to rely on Tanner for their care. As a community, I think that’s something we can all be proud of.”

He said the foremost concern at Tanner is providing the highest possible level of care for its patients.

“That’s what we strive for every time a patient comes to us for care,” Howard said. “They’re our neighbor, and we’re going to make sure they receive the best care possible. That’s something that helps distinguish Tanner from many other providers – our tradition of neighbors caring for neighbors.”

In addition, Howard said having quality regional hospitals helps communities in numerous ways.

“For one thing, it helps families find reliable care within their own communities,” he said. “That matters in smaller communities like ours, because it’s important for us to keep services local as much as possible. It’s not just about visiting a local doctor, but going to a local restaurant after that visit, or shopping at a local pharmacy. For another, when companies and industry are looking to relocate to a region or expand, the availability of high-quality health care is something that they consider. It gives the region a competitive advantage.”

Howard said he hopes people will continue to use information like that in Georgia Trend to help them make health care decisions.

“It’s become important to do research for various aspects of our lives,” he said. “We do research before we buy a new car to make sure we’re getting one that’s safe and reliable. We do research before we move to a new home to make sure it’s in a safe neighborhood with good schools. And we do research to make sure that we’re receiving high quality health care for ourselves and our loved ones.”

Howard said that data, like that compiled by Georgia Trend to prepare its listings, are publicly available and intended to help people make better informed health care decisions.

“The data is out there,” he said. “We report it ourselves on www.tannerquality.org, so visitors can compare our hospitals to others in the region and see how we perform on benchmarks of quality. There are a plethora of websites and resources that gauge how well a hospital performs, and I’m proud to say that we really do quite well on many of them.”

Georgia Trend downloaded the data for its analysis in September from www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov. Information on hospital size and bed numbers came from the American Hospital Directory website at www.ahd.com.

To come up with the rankings, Georgia Trend worked with researchers and healthcare professionals at WellStar Health System in Marietta, under the direction of Marcia L. Delk, M.D., MBA, senior vice president safety and chief quality officer. Kerri Franklin, executive director of quality informatics and improvement, was the chief researcher. The WellStar team accessed the databases and compiled the data mathematically, with decisions on how to present the data made by Georgia Trend.

These latest Georgia Trend awards cap a successful year of numerous quality achievement honors for Tanner Health System.

Both Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton and Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica were honored with the HealthGrades’ Outstanding Patient Experience Award in the past year.

In addition, Tanner Health System has been named one of the 15 Top Health Systems in the nation for 2012 by the research firm Thomson Reuters, and Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton, Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica and Higgins General Hospital in Bremen were distinguished in 2012 as Top Performers on Key Quality Measures by The Joint Commission and were included in the highest category of the Georgia Hospital Association’s 2012 quality honor roll.

Also in 2012, for the fourth consecutive year, Tanner Ortho and Spine Center at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton was named No. 1 in Georgia by HealthGrades for overall orthopedic services.