Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades: See Where LI Hospitals Stand

LONG ISLAND, NY — Long Island hospitals were recently graded on their safety standards, according to new spring 2020 ratings released by the Leapfrog Group this week.

Safety grades are released by the nonprofit organization twice per year, in the spring and the fall. The ratings of more than 2,600 hospitals nationwide focus on accidents, injuries and infections, and help to assess how well a facility prevents medical errors and other harm to patients.

The group determines the hospital grades by looking through safety data reported in 2018 and 2019. The report does not take into account the strain the new coronavirus outbreak is placing on some hospitals where staff are experiencing shortages of drugs and protection equipment.

On Long Island:

• 3 hospitals received an "A" grade.
• 4 hospitals received a "B" grade.
• 13 hospitals received a "C" grade.
• 2 hospitals received a "D" grade.

No hospitals in the state received an "F" grade.

In the United States, the latest grades show 33 percent of hospitals nationwide earned an "A" grade while 25 percent earned a "B." Some 35 percent earned a "C" grade, 7 percent a "D" and less than 1 percent received an "F" grade.

Here are the Leapfrog Group's spring 2020 grades for hospitals on Long Island:

• Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson - A
• St. Charles Hospital, Port Jefferson - A
• St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center, Roslyn - A
• Huntington Hospital, Huntington - B
• NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola - B
• Peconic Bay Medical Center, Riverhead - B
• St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center, Smithtown - B
• Long Island Community Hospital, Patchogue - C
• Glen Cove Hospital, Glen Cove - C
• Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center, West Islip - C
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park - C
• Long Island Jewish Valley Stream, Valley Stream - C
• Mercy Medical Center, Rockville Centre - C
• North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset - C
• Plainview Hospital, Plainview - C
• South Nassau Communities Hospital, Oceanside - C
• Southampton Hospital, Southampton - C
• St. Joseph Hospital, Bethpage - C
• Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook - C
• Syosset Hospital, Syosset - C
• Nassau University Medical Center, East Meadow - D
• Southside Hospital, Bay Shore - D

To determine each state's grade, Leapfrog used up to 28 national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and information from other supplemental data sources. When averaged, performance measures produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The goal of the Hospital Safety Grade is to reduce deaths caused by hospital errors and injuries.

Leapfrog estimates that if the risk at all hospitals was equivalent to what it is at "A" hospitals, 50,000 lives at other facilities would have been saved. Overall, the researchers estimate that 160,000 lives are lost every year due to avoidable medical errors. That figure is down from 2016, when the Leapfrog Group estimated there were 205,000 avoidable deaths.

For a full description of the methodology, go here.