Long Island Hospital Safety Grades Released For 2017

How safe is your hospital? New grades released Wednesday by The Leapfrog Group will tell you just that. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by employers and healthcare providers, ranked 21 Long Island hospitals as part of its spring 2017 safety grades.

The hospitals were given a letter grade from A through F based on several factors. Of the 21 Long Island hospitals that were graded, two received an A. None received an F, but there was one that was graded a D.

The Long Island hospitals that were assigned a C grade all declined to report information to Leapfrog. It is unclear why Leapfrog assigns such a grade with no recent information to base it on.

"All Northwell Health hospitals are transparent in sharing quality and performance information with the public," Northwell, which did not provide information to Leapfrog, said in a statement. "Whenever information contained in the various "hospital report cards" identifies a potential quality issue, the public can be assured we are already aware of it and working aggressively to resolve it. We do this routinely as part of our ongoing internal operations and analysis (no matter how high our grades may be), so that we can provide the best patient experience possible."

To come up with the grades for hospitals that did report information, Leapfrog looks at medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections. The goal is to determine what a patient's risk of further injury or infection is if they visit a certain hospital. Military and veteran’s hospitals did not receive a hospital safety score since these hospitals publicly report on safety differently than other hospitals.

According to the organization, more than 1,000 Americans die each day from preventable hospital errors. Hospitals given a B rating by Leapfrog had a 9 percent higher risk of avoidable death than A hospitals. That number jumps to 35 percent in C hospitals and 50 percent higher in D and F hospitals.

New York was ranked 43rd in the nation, which is an improvement from spring and fall 2016 rankings. Overall, 139 New York hospitals were graded and only 14, or 10 percent, received an A rating.

The top-ranked state was Maine while Hawaii, Oregon, Wisconsin and Idaho rounded out the top five.

Here are the grades the Long Island hospitals received. (Visit the full list to learn more about individual rankings.)

A

• Eastern Long Island Hospital
• St. Francis Hospital

B

• North Shore University Hospital
• St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center
• St. Charles Hospital

C

• Glen Cove Hospital
• Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center
• Huntington Hospital
• John T. Mather Memorial Hospital
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center
• Mercy Medical Center
• Nassau University Medical Center
• Peconic Bay Medical Center
• Plainview Hospital
• Southampton Hospital
• South Nassau Communities Hospital
• St. Joseph Hospital
• Stony Brook University Hospital
• Syosset Hospital
• Winthrop-University Hospital

D

• Southside Hospital

Patch reporter Kara Seymor contributed to this report

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