Hospital Safety Grades: The Best — And Worst — On Long Island

A nationwide hospital safety analysis has found that 2 hospitals on Long Island received an "A" grade for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections, which collectively are the third leading cause of death in America. On the flip side two hospitals hospitals received a "D" or worse.

The Leapfrog Group released it's bi-yearly hospital safety grades on Tuesday, finding that hospitals overall have improved in reducing the number of avoidable deaths. The group assessed roughly 2,500 hospitals. Of those, 30 percent earned an "A," 28 percent earned a "B," 35 percent a "C," 6 percent a "D" and 1 percent an "F."

"The national numbers on death and harm in hospitals have alarmed us for decades. What we see in the new round of Safety Grades are signs of many hospitals making significant improvements in their patient safety record," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a release.

The assessment system assigns school-style letter grades to general acute-care hospitals. The hope is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

Here are the full list of Long Island hospital grades:

A

• Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson
• St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn

B

• North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset

C

• Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center, West Islip
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park
• Long Island Jewish Valley Stream, Valley Stream
• Mercy Medical Center, Rockville Centre
• Nassau University Medical Center, East Meadow
• Northwell Health- Huntington Hospital, Huntington
• Northwell Health System- Glen Cove Hospital, Glen Cove
• Northwell Health System- Plainview Hospital, Plainveiw
• Northwell Health System- Syosset Hospital, Syosset
• NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola
• Peconic Bay Medical Center, Riverhead
• South Nassau Communities Hospital, Oceanside
• Southampton Hospital, Southampton
• St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center, Smithtown
• St. Charles Hospital, Port Jefferson
• St. Joseph Hospital, Bethpage
• Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook

D

• Northwell Health System- Southside Hospital, Bay Shore

F

• Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center, Patchogue

Among the findings nationally, five hospitals that received an "A" grade for the first time this year previously received an "F" grade, the group said, and 46 hospitals earned an "A" for the first time since the grading system began six years ago.

Leapfrog said its analysis showed 89 hospitals that had previously received "D" or "F" ratings had improved to an "A" this year.

Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho all previously ranked near the bottom of the state rankings with low percentages of "A" hospitals, but now all rank in the top 10.

Here are some of the other findings:

• The five states with the highest percentage of "A" hospitals this spring are Hawaii, Idaho, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Virginia
• Ten states have hospitals with "F" grades are California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey and New York

Leapfrog says you shouldn't refuse emergency care because of a bad safety grade. They're meant to be used as a guide for planned events and a research tool for potential emergencies.

Patch reporters Dan Hampton and Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this report.

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