Hospital On LI Named Among ‘Best’ For Maternity Care In New Report

OCEANSIDE, NY — One hospital on Long Island made the top grade in a new ranking of the Best Hospitals for Maternity Care for 2023-24 released Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report — Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital.

The ranking of 680 hospitals nationwide is a guide for parents making one of the most important decisions of their lives — where their baby will be born. Each hospital participating in the U.S. News survey received a scorecard describing their performance on a checklist of items parents look for when choosing where to have their baby.

Jennifer Winston, a health data scientist for U.S. News, said the top hospitals in the survey are those with a “high performing” designation for care given to patients with uncomplicated pregnancies. These hospitals had Cesarean Section rates of 26 percent or lower and newborn complication rates of 37 percent or lower, Winston explained in a news release.

Of the 40 New York hospitals that participated in the U.S. News maternity services survey, eight received the high performing designation:

• Cayuga Medical Center at Ithaca
• Glens Falls Hospital
• Mercy Hospital-Buffalo
• Montefiore Nyack Hospital
• Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital
• New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital
• NYU Langone Hospitals
• St. Joseph's Health Hospital in Syracuse

Other local hospitals that completed the U.S. News survey, but did not rank as “high performing” were:

• Stony Brook University Hospital
• South Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health
• Peconic Bay Medical Center at Northwell Health
• North Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center at Northwell Health
• Huntington Hospital
• Good Samaritan University Hospital

New to the rankings this year is the inaugural “Maternity Care Access Hospitals” list, which highlights 73 hospitals providing services in what otherwise would be maternity care deserts that have “left millions of people without local access to maternity care” in some parts of the country, Winston said.

In New York, two upstate medical centers were on that list: Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown and Cayuga Medical Center at Ithaca.

The hospitals are ranked on objective measures of quality. Including C-section rate, lower-risk pregnancies, newborn complication rates, exclusive breast milk feeding rates, early elective delivery rates, birthing-friendly practices and transparency on racial/ethnic disparities, among other measures. Read more about the methodology.