New LI Hospital Safety Ratings Released: 1 Gets 'D' Grade, 8 Get 'A'

LONG ISLAND, NY — Several Long Island hospitals received top grades in protecting patient safety, even as the average risk of contracting deadly infections remained elevated nationwide after spiking to a five-year high during the pandemic, according to the spring 2023 hospital safety grades released Wednesday by The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit health care watchdog.

Patient experience measures — like communication from doctors — also declined, according to the report. Leapfrog said the findings should be a wake-up call to hospitals nationwide.

The Leapfrog Group uses 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, eight hospitals received an A, seven hospitals received a B, seven hospitals received a C and one hospital received a D grade. No hospitals received an F.

Leapfrog Ratings 2023

A

• South Shore University Hospital (Bay Shore)
• Huntington Hospital
• North Shore University Hospital (Manhasset)
• Peconic Bay Medical Center (Riverhead)
• NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island (Mineola)
• St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center (Roslyn)
• Mather Hospital (Port Jefferson)
• Syosset Hospital (Syosset)

B

• Glen Cove Hospital
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center (New Hyde Park)
• St. Charles Hospital (Port Jefferson)
• Plainview Hospital
• St. Joseph Hospital (Bethpage)
• Long Island Jewish Valley Stream (Valley Stream)
• Stony Brook University Hospital (Stony Brook)

C

• Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital (Greenport)
• Long Island Community Hospital at NYU Langone Health (Patchogue)
• Mt. Sinai South Nassau (Oceanside)
• Mercy Hospital (Rockville Centre)
• Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center (West Islip)
• Stony Brook Southampton Hospital (Southampton)
• St. Catherine of Siena Hospital (Smithtown)

D

• Nassau University Medical Center (East Meadow)

F

• None

Dr. Peter Silver, senior vice president, associate chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Northwell Health, said in a statement Wednesday that the spring Leapfrog report showed Northwell hospitals across the region are "continuing to provide the best quality and safest care to our patients at both our community and tertiary care hospitals,”

“The survey reflects our deep commitment to patient safety across the care continuum, whether it be maternity care, surgical outcomes, care in our intensive care units or care for children," Silver said. "Our scores reflect not only our dedication to providing the best possible patient care, but how we strive to do better every day.”

Silver said the Leapfrog survey reviews key patient safety measures including hospital-acquired infections, medication safety, handwashing, maternity care and surgical safety. Certain patient experience scores also are factored in the analysis, which are based on patient satisfaction surveys administered by Press Ganey Associates.

“We are extremely proud of the accomplishments of all our hospitals and our 83,000 team members who go above and beyond every day to improve care for our patients who entrust us with their care,” he said. “Northwell has a culture for continuous improvement and you feel that when you walk into our buildings.”

High rates of three health care-associated infections, or HAIs, “should stop hospitals in their tracks,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a news release, noting that “infections like these can be life for death for some patients.”

“We recognize the tremendous strain the pandemic put on hospitals and their workforce, but alarming findings like these indicate hospitals must recommit to patient safety and build more resilience,” Binder said.

The problematic infections are Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA; central line-associated bloodstream infections, or CLABSI; and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, or CAUTI. When compared to rankings that covered the period immediately before the COVID-19 outbreak, the analysis found an increased infection ratio for all three infections. The spring 2023 rankings cover late 2021 and 2022.

However, another such infection, Clostridioides difficile, or C.Diff, improved and there was no significant change for surgical site infections post surgery, the report said. The standardized infection ratio used to measure changes in the rates of infections compares the actual number of reported infections to the predicted number at each hospital.

“Not only are HAIs among the leading causes of death in the U.S., they also increase length of hospitalization stays and add to costs,” Binder said. “Our pre-pandemic data showed improved HAI measures, but the spring 2023 Safety Grade data spotlights how hospital responses to the pandemic led to a decline in patient safety and HAI management.”

Patient experience measures included communication with nurses and doctors, staff responsiveness, and communication about medicine and discharge information. Nationally, the average of all five measures declined when compared to pre-pandemic measures, according to the report.