Long Island Hospital Safety Grades 2021: The Best And The Worst

LONG ISLAND, NY — Several Long Island hospitals received top safety marks, while others didn’t quite measure up, in The Leapfrog Group’s annual spring safety grades released last Thursday.

The nonprofit health care watchdog group grades hospitals twice a year, assigning letter grades from “A” to “F” based on each hospital's ability to protect patients from preventable errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

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.

There 16 hospitals in New York state that received an A grade. Only one hospital in New York — New York Community Hospital in Brooklyn — received an F.

Here are the hospital rankings for Long Island.

A-Grade Hospitals:

• NYU Langone Hospital — Long Island, Mineola
• St. Catherine of Siena Hospital, Smithtown
• St. Charles Hospital, Port Jefferson
• St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center, Roslyn

B-Grade Hospitals

• Huntington Hospital, Huntington
• Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson
• Mercy Medical Center, Rockville Centre
• St. Joseph Hospital, Bethpage

C-Grade Hospitals

• BMHMC DBA LI Community Hospital, Patchogue
• Glen Cove Hospital, Glen Cove
• Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center, West Islip
• Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park
• Long Island Jewish Valley Stream, Valley Stream
• North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset
• Peconic Bay Medical Center, Riverhead
• Plainview Hospital, Plainview
• Mount Sinai South Nassau, Oceanside
• Southampton Hospital, Southampton
• Syosset Hospital, Syosset

D-Grade Hospitals

• Nassau University Medical Center, East Meadow
• Southside Hospital, Bay Shore
• Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook

"Delivering the highest standards for patient care in a safe environment is at the core of Stony Brook University Hospital's focus every day," Stony Brook hospital officials said. "We constantly strive for continuous improvement to achieve optimal outcomes. While we take all hospital ratings seriously, Stony Brook University Hospital has been recognized with very high ratings from many other independent organizations and continues to meet standards of quality and safety as set forth by all accrediting bodies and government agencies."

“All Northwell Health hospitals are transparent in sharing quality and performance information with the public," Northwell, the parent organization of Southside Hospital, said in a statement. "Whenever information contained in the various ‘hospital report cards’ identifies a potential quality issue, the public can rest assured that 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 well these facilities are already performing — so that we can provide the best patient experience possible. Whether we agree or disagree with the methodology used for one report card over another (Leapfrog’s self-reporting guidelines for measurement do not compare to the validated methods of others), we take hospital report cards seriously and use them for their intended purpose — to improve the quality of care to our patients. As always, we continue to work hard, pay attention to detail and be vigilant about patient safety and satisfaction."

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.
• There were no "A" hospitals in South Dakota or North Dakota.

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.