8 NYC hospitals earn poor grades for patient safety: report card

Eight NYC hospitals earned a “D” for patient safety in a report card released Wednesday by a health care watchdog group.

The Leapfrog Group gave poor grades to St. John’s Hospital. Barnabas and the Montefiore Einstein and Moses Medical Center campuses in the Bronx; NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull and Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn; St. John’s Episcopal Hospital-South Shore and Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens; and Staten Island University Hospital – North Campus.

Facilities are graded from “A” to “F” based on how well they protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

NYU Langone’s Manhattan and Brooklyn hospitals were the only ones in the city to earn an “A.” Northwell Health, which runs Staten Island University Hospital, has also steadily risen in the rankings since it began participating in the 2022 Patient Safety Report Card.

In a statement, the NYU Langone system noted that the high marks extend to Tisch Hospital and Kimmel Pavilion in Manhattan, NYU Langone Hospital – Long Island and NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn.

“Thanks to the extraordinary work of our dedicated and talented patient care teams, NYU Langone hospitals remain the safest places to receive care by any objective measure, as this recognition from Leapfrog demonstrates,” said Dr. Robert I. Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone. Health and dean of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

The post was referred to each of the City “D” hospitals for comment.

Northwell Health defended its commitment to patient safety.

“Patient safety is central to the Northwell mission, and we rely on a number of metrics to ensure we are providing quality care to every patient seeking treatment for injury or illness. We only began participating in Leapfrog in 2022, and some hospitals have progressed faster in those ratings — including seven Northwell hospitals that received an A rating in this survey,” a representative for Staten Island University Hospital said in a statement to The Post.

“Staten Island University remains one of our safest hospitals, which is why it was awarded a four-star rating by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which uses a much higher number of criteria,” the statement continued.

The Leapfrog Group report card is released twice a year, with approximately 3,000 US hospitals rated.

New York ranked 39th in the nation with 11.8% of its hospitals earning an “A” — a slight improvement from fall 2023, when it was 42nd with 10.9% of its facilities earning they received the main honors.

However, three hospitals in the state scored an “F” on the new report card — two are in Elmira and one is in Buffalo.

In a statement, the Leapfrog Group noted that these ratings represent “the first sign of improvement with all measures improving significantly since fall 2023,” but the patient experience has not returned to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The patient experience is very difficult to impact without providing better care, so these findings are encouraging,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog Group. “We were also pleased to see a reduction in preventable infections, which cause terrible suffering and sometimes death. When we look at these positive trends, we see lives saved – and that’s gratifying.”