NYC Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And Worst

NEW YORK CITY – There's no doubting the superhuman effort health care workers have dedicated to New York City over the past year as the city was a hammered by the coronavirus pandemic.

But while doctors, nurses and other professionals deserve praise and thanks, not all hospitals performed equally, according to new spring 2021 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 across the country focus on accidents, injuries and infections, and help to assess how well a facility prevents medical errors and other harm to patients.

This year's showed only two city hospitals from 45 earned a grade A. Just six got a B, while 22 graded by Leapfrog earned a C and 14 earned a D. There was one F grade.

More than 2,700 general, acute-care U.S. hospitals were assessed for Leapfrog’s Spring Safety Grades. Among those hospitals, 27 have achieved 19 consecutive “A” grades in every biannual grading cycle since Leapfrog launched the safety grades in spring 2012.

Here are the grades New York City hospitals were given by the Leapfrog Group:

1. NYU Langone Medical Center (Manhattan): A
2. NYC Health + Hospitals - Bellevue (Manhattan): D
3. Mount Sinai West (Manhattan): B
4. Mount Sinai Beth Israel (Manhattan): D
5. New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center (Manhattan): C
6. Northwell Health System - Lenox Hill Hospital (Manhattan): C
7. New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan: C
8. The Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan): B
9. NYC Health + Hospitals - Metropolitan (Manhattan) : B
10. Mount Sinai (Queens): C
11. Mount Sinai Morningside (Manhattan): B
12. The Brooklyn Hospital Center (Brooklyn): B
13. NYC Health + Hospitals - Woodhull (Brooklyn): C
14. Wyckoff Heights Medical Center (Brookyln): D
15. NYC Health + Hospitals - Harlem (Manhattan): C
16. NYC Health + Hospitals - Elmhurst (Queens): D
17. New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital (Brooklyn): D
18. Interfaith Medical Center (Brooklyn): C
19. NYC Health + Hospitals - Lincoln (Bronx): C
20. New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Medical Center (Manhattan): C
21. NYC Health + Hospitals - Kings County (Brooklyn): C
22. Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center (Brooklyn): C
23. SUNY Downstate Medical Center University Hospital of Brooklyn: C
24. NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn: A
25. Maimonides Medical Center (Brooklyn): D
26. Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital (Queens): C
27. BronxCare Health System (Bronx): C
28. Brookdale Hospital Medical Center (Brooklyn): D
29. New York-Presbyterian (Queens): C
30. St. Barnabas Hospital (Bronx): C
31. Flushing Hospital Medical Center (Queens): C
32. New York-Presbyterian The Allen Hospital (Manhattan): C
33. Mount Sinai (Brooklyn): D
34. New York Community Hospital: F
35. Richmond University Medical Center (Staten Island): D
36. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center (Queens): C
37. NYC Health + Hospitals - Queens (Queens): B
38. Montefiore Einstein Campus (Bronx): D
39. NYC Health + Hospitals - Jacobi (Bronx): D
40. NYC Health + Hospitals - North Central Bronx (Bronx): C
41. Montefiore Moses Campus (Bronx): D
42. Coney Island Hospital (Brooklyn): C
43. Montefiore Wakefield Campus (Bronx): D
44. Northwell Health System - Staten Island University Hospital (Staten Island): D
45. St. John's Episcopal Hospital (Queens): C

It’s worth noting the hospitals were graded during a time of extraordinary pressure on the health care system due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“This pandemic emphasized how much we rely on America’s health care workforce,” Leapfrog Group President and CEO Leah Binder said in a news release. “Our straight ‘A’ hospitals remind us how preparedness protected their patients as well as their workforce and created a high level of organizational resilience.”

Across all states, highlights of findings from the spring 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade include:

• Thirty-three percent of hospitals received an "A," 24 percent received a "B," 35 percent received a "C," 7 percent received a "D," and less than 1 percent received an "F."
• Five states with the highest percentages of "A" hospitals are Massachusetts, Idaho, Maine, Virginia, and North Carolina.

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.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is peer-reviewed by a panel of national experts, and the Leapfrog Group receives guidance from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.