Hudson Valley’s Safest Hospitals: Latest Rankings Released For Fall

HUDSON VALLEY — Several Hudson Valley 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 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.

In the Hudson Valley, one hospital received an A, four hospitals received a B, 11 hospitals received a C and four hospitals received a D grade. No hospitals in the Hudson Valley received an F.

Here are the ratings, according to Leapfrog:

A

• White Plains Hospital, White Plains

B

• Bon Secours Community Hospital, Port Jervis
• Phelps Hospital, Sleepy Hollow
• NewYork-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital, Cortlandt Manor
• Putnam Hospital, Carmel

C

• St. Joseph’s Medical Center of Yonkers, Yonkers
• Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie
• St. John’s Riverside Hospital - Dobbs Ferry Pavilion
• Northern Dutchess Hospital, Rhinebeck
• NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital
• Montefiore Nyack Hospital, Nyack
• St. John’s Riverside Hospital - ParkCare Pavilion, Yonkers
• Good Samaritan Hospital, Suffern
• Northern Westchester Hospital, Mount Kisco
• Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital, New Rochelle
• Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall, Newburgh

D

• Columbia Memorial Hospital, Hudson
• MidHudson Regional Hospital of Westchester Medical Center, Poughkeepsie
• St. John’s Riverside Hospital - Andrus Pavilion, Yonkers
• Westchester Medical Center, Valhalla

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.

Denise C. Mananas, assistant vice president of external affairs at St. John's Riverside Hospital - Andrus Pavilion, said that, clearly, receiving a low patient safety grade is not a desirable outcome.

"It is unfortunate that our grade is strongly influenced by data taken during the time period encompassing the heart of the COVID pandemic," she said. "Everyone at St. John’s comes to work every day striving to provide the very best care to our patients in the safest manner possible. We will continue to work tirelessly to improve our performance on this survey and demonstrate our commitment to our patients and our community through mechanisms such as the Leapfrog survey."

Patch reached out to the three other hospitals that received D ratings but have not heard back from them. This article will be updated when Patch receives responses.

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.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been modified to include a comment from St. John's Riverside Hospital - Andrus Pavilion about its rating.