LAGRANGE — WellStar West Georgia Medical Center has again earned an A ranking from The Leapfrog Group, placing it among the safest hospitals in the United States.

Leapfrog is a national patient safety watchdog organization that assigns hospital safety scores twice yearly that assess medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

West Georgia Medical Center is one of only two Georgia hospitals to earn straight A’s since 2013. Nationally, 153 hospitals have earned that distinction. Seventeen hospitals in Georgia, about one-fourth, scored an A for spring 2016.

“Our goal is to provide high quality, safe care for every patient we serve and in every single encounter we have with them,” said WGMC President Jerry Fulks. “Our patients should feel confident that each of our more than 1,300 team members, our physicians and other clinicians consider safety as one of our top priorities. Continuing our ‘straight A’ designation demonstrates that we have an excellent track record of keeping our patients safe.”

The Leapfrog Group uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign A, B, C, D and F grades to more than 2,500 hospitals per year.

Besides its own hospital survey, the safety scores also are compiled from information from entities such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. For the first time, the hospital safety score includes five measures of patient-reported experience with the hospital as well as two of the most common infections, C. difficile and MRSA.