7 Long Island Hospitals Earn ‘A’ Grades, 1 Gets ‘D’ In Latest Leapfrog Ratings

LONG ISLAND, NY — Hospitals in Long Island and nationwide made significant improvements in preventing a “disturbing” increase in hospital infections during the coronavirus pandemic, The Leapfrog Group said with the release Monday of its Fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grades Report.

The Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit healthcare watchdog group, used an academic grading scale with five letter grades to score nearly 3,000 hospitals nationwide on how well they prevent medical errors, accidents, and infections. Overall, the report shows hospitals significantly reduced infections after the pandemic spike, but patient-reported experiences declined for the second year in a row.

Among 22 Long Island hospitals evaluated in the report, seven received the gold-standard “A” safety grade. Another seven earned a “B,” seven earned a “C” and and only one earned a “D.”

Long Island hospitals earning “A” grades are:

• Peconic Bay Medical Center, Riverhead
• South Shore University Hospital, Bay Shore
• NYU Langone Hospital Long Island, Mineola
• St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn
• Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson
• St. Charles Hospital, Port Jefferson
• Syosset Hospital, Syosset

Long Island Hospitals earning "B" grades are:

• North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset
• Huntington Hospital, Huntington
• Glen Cove Hospital, Glen Cove
• Long Island Jewish Hospital, New Hyde Park
• St. Joseph's Hospital, Bethpage
• Stony Brook Southampton Hospital
• Stony Brook University Hospital

Long Island Hospitals earning "C" grades are:

• Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, Greenport
• Long Island Community Hospital at NYU Langone, East Patchogue
• Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital, Oceanside
• Good Samaritan Hospital, West Islip
• Plainview Hospital, Plainview
• Long Island Jewish Hospital - Valley Stream
• St. Catherine of Siena, Smithtown

Some hospitals saw their ratings increase over the years like Peconic Bay and South Shore University Hospital. Peconic Bay saw an increase from a "C" to an "A," while South Shore increased from a "D" to an "A." Mather Hospital increased from a "B" to an "A."

Other hospitals rose only slightly from a "C" to a "B," like Glen Cove and Long Island Jewish hospitals. Others fell in their rankings such as Huntington and Manhasset hospitals, which went from "A" to "B."

Some hospitals stayed consistent in their rankings such as NYU Langone Long Island and St. Francis, which both garnered straight "As," and Long Island Community Hospital and Mount Sinai South Nassau, which garnered "Cs."

Nassau University Medical Center was the only hospital to receive a "D," which it has maintained since around 2020.

The Leapfrog Group grades hospitals twice a year. In the fall report, the first report using post-pandemic data, 30 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an “A,” 24 percent earned a “B,” 39 percent earned a “C,” 7 percent earned a “D,” and fewer than 1 percent earned an “F.”

The 10 states with the highest number of “A” hospitals are Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Connecticut, Montana, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.

States that had no “A” hospitals are Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware, and North Dakota, as well as Washington, D.C.

More than 85 percent of hospitals saw decreases in the three most dangerous infections — MRSA, central-line bloodstream infections, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

19 percent improved in all three infection measures;
66 percent improved in at least one infection measure;
16 percent continued to worsen or did not improve.

“Now that we have pre- and post-pandemic data for patient safety measures, we are encouraged by the improvement in infections and applaud hospitals for reversing the disturbing infection spike we saw during the pandemic,” Leapfrog president and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release.

However, Binder said the continued decline in patient experiences is “deeply concerning.” Hospitals in all states have seen a significant decline in reported patient experiences since the fall of 2021, the report said.

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.