Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare reduced serious safety events by as much as 90% over the past decade even as it grew from five hospitals to 28, the system said Aug. 10.
The organization tied the improvement to a quality and safety transformation it launched in 2014, when it began standardizing clinical processes across a system that was in the early stages of rapid expansion. Piedmont operates nearly 2,000 care locations and treats 4.5 million patients a year, according to a news release.
The results act as a case study for a question that can shadow health system growth strategy: whether quality holds up when a system swells in size.
Piedmont earned 31 “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group over the past two years, more than any other health system in Georgia, and ranked in the top third nationally among similarly sized systems, the release said.
The system said serious safety events fell 80% to 90% as the system expanded its error-prevention tools, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections dropped 60% between 2016 and 2025. Net Promoter Scores, a measure of patient loyalty, rose 12 points over the span.
The operational engine behind the numbers could help executives weighing their own safety investments. Piedmont integrated “Promise Practice” evidence-based checklists — a common practice for health system quality — in its EHR. The checklists gave clinicians standardized, real-time prompts at the point of care. It paired those with systemwide dashboards, Lean Six Sigma methodology to eliminate variation and an error-prevention model that empowers front-line employees to flag concerns.
Kevin Brown, Piedmont’s president and CEO, framed the work as a financial strategy as much as a clinical one.
“Our experience has shown that higher quality care leads to better outcomes, greater efficiency and lower costs,” he said in the release. “By focusing relentlessly on safety and quality, we have improved the care experience for patients, strengthened our workforce and created the foundation for sustainable growth.”
That argument — that safety is a margin and growth lever, not a compliance cost — is one a growing number of systems are testing as they scale through acquisitions and greenfield expansion.
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