Long Island's Safest Hospitals: New Rankings Released

LONG ISLAND, NY — Several Long Island hospitals have made improvements in protecting patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections while others have fallen short, according to the Fall 2022 Hospital Safety Grades report released Wednesday.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on more than 30 measures of patient safety. Leapfrog says its hospital rating system is the only one in the country focusing solely on a hospital’s ability to protect patients from preventable errors.

On Long Island, seven hospitals received an A, five hospitals received a B, five hospitals received a C and three hospitals received a D grade. No hospitals received an F.

Here are the top hospitals on Long Island, according to Leapfrog:

A

• Huntington Hospital
• North Shore University Hospital (Manhasset)
• NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island (Mineola)
• Glen Cove Hospital
• St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center (Roslyn)
• Mather Hospital (Port Jefferson)
• Syosset Hospital

B

• South Shore University Hospital (Bay Shore)
• Peconic Bay Medical Center (Riverhead)
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center (New Hyde Park)
• St. Charles Hospital (Port Jefferson)
• Plainview Hospital

C

• Long Island Community Hospital @ NYU Langone Health (Mineola)
• Mt. Sinai South Nassau (Oceanside)
• Southampton Hospital
• Long Island Jewish Valley Stream
• Stony Brook University Hospital
• St. Catherine of Siena Hospital (Smithtown)

D

• Nassau University Medical Center (East Meadow)
• Catholic Health's Mercy Hospital (Rockville Centre)
• Good Samaritan University Hospital (West Islip)

Maureen Shannon, senior vice president of quality and population health at Nassau University Medical Center, told Patch in a statement the scores are misleading. They're based on data that is over a year old, she said, adding that she feels they don't accurately reflect the hospital's recent process improvements.

Those improvements include: "a decrease in Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (in participation with the Eastern Quality Improvement Collaborative), lower MRSA infection rates, improvements in Bar-Coded Medication Administration (BCMA) rates and the prioritization of Computerized Physician Order Entry to assure patient safety."

"We anticipate higher rating in the future due to the changes that have been implemented," Shannon said.

Dr. Jason Golbin, Catholic Health's chief medical officer, told Patch in a statement they strive to ensure top-quality care, and review many health care reports and metrics to identify ways to improve their care.

"We are extremely proud of the continued excellence in patient safety at St. Francis Hospital," Golbin said. "The 20-straight A’s are the most for a New York hospital since the rating system debuted in 2012."

St. Francis Hospital was, he said, also the only hospital on Long Island to receive a five-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for consistently high patient satisfaction scores.

"Through our overall research, areas for focused improvement were identified, and we share best practices across all of our hospitals. I anticipate that we will see those improvements reflected in Leapfrog in the future, especially given quality, safety, and patient experience remain the core values of our health care system," Golbin said.

Dr. Peter Silver, senior vice president, associate chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Northwell Health, said in a statement Wednesday that the report showed Northwell hospitals are committed to providing quality, safe care.

“The hard work and dedication to patient safety is demonstrated by all 80,000 of our employees, with direct or indirect patient contact, from the time a patient is admitted to a hospital to discharge. Our scores reflect the collective efforts of every staff person delivering the highest degree of care to our patients," Silver said.

With the release of its fall report, The Leapfrog Group has analyzed hospital safety data for a decade. Most hospitals have improved over time under more public scrutiny, Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

“For a long time, the health care community tried to improve safety, but progress stalled,” Binder said. “The big difference over this decade is that for the first time, we publicly reported each hospital’s record on patient safety, and that galvanized the kind of change we all hoped for.

“It’s not enough change, but we are on the right track,” she said.

Notably, hospitals reduced what are called “never events” — accidents and errors that never should have happened, the release said. Incidents of falls and trauma and incidents in which objects were unintentionally left in a patient’s body during surgery were down 25 percent, the watchdog group said.

Also, according to the report, progress on the number of patients treated for health care-associated infections declined to pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly two dozen hospitals have received straight-A reports every year since the Leapfrog Group began its safety grades in 2012. They are:

• Arizona: Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix
• California: French Hospital Medical Center, San Luis Obispo; Kaiser Permanente Orange County-Anaheim Medical Center, Anaheim; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, San Luis Obispo
• Colorado: Rose Medical Center, Denver
• Florida: AdventHealth Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach.
• Illinois: Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst; Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Winfield; University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago
• Massachusetts: Beverly Hospital, Beverly; Saint Anne's Hospital, Fall River
• Michigan: University of Michigan Health, Ann Arbor
• Mississippi: Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle, Columbus
• North Carolina: Rex Hospital, Inc., Raleigh
• Ohio: OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, Dublin;OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital, Delaware
• Texas: St. David's Medical Center, Austin,
• Virginia: Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg; Sentara CarePlex Hospital, Hampton; Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg
• Washington: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle

Search for your hospital’s fall 2022 safety grade and read more about the methodology.