8 Long Island hospitals rank among the nation's best for patient safety

Eight Long Island hospitals rank among the best in the country for patient safety, according to a new report.

Those Long Island hospitals represent the majority of the 12 New York State hospitals ranked by Healthgrades, a Denver, Colorado-based health care information company. The firm gave 438 hospitals in over 40 states patient safety excellence awards based on the infrequency of preventable patient complications, according to Healthgrades. 

Of the eight hospitals who won the annual awards, six are in Northwell Health’s network: Plainview and Huntington hospitals, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, North Shore University Hospital, Mather and Glen Cove hospitals. This year is the first time Mather and Glen Cove Hospitals have been awarded a patient safety award.

This year’s list also includes Long Island Community Hospital, which is a part of NYU-Langone and was renamed NYU Langone Hospital – Suffolk last year, and, for the first time, Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital based in Oceanside. 

The awards come amid high demand for health care on Long Island. These awards and other rankings can help patients evaluate a hospital, but, experts said, patients should look at multiple hospital rankings and consider their own needs when evaluating their options.

Healthgrades' ranking methodology

Healthgrades used federal Medicaid and Medicare data from October 2021 through September 2024 to predict the number of patient safety incidents likely to occur at a particular hospital, such as death during surgery, ulcers, or a fall on hospital grounds, according to the company.

Healthgrades tracks 13 different patient safety indicators, said David Bromall, vice president of quality solutions for Healthgrades. Among those is tracking whether foreign objects — like gauze or sponges — are left inside a person during a surgery. Any hospital where that happened in the three-year time frame Healthgrades analyzes is not considered for an award, Bromall said.

The company gives out its awards to the 10% of roughly 4,400 hospitals with the lowest rate of patient safety incidents, Bromall said.

Peter Silver, chief quality officer and a senior vice president for Northwell Health, credited the health system’s awards to its care practices, which evaluate patients for fall risk to avoid accidental trips and encourage patient mobility to mitigate bed sores, for example.

The patient safety awards should not be the only criteria a patient uses to pick a hospital, but “part of that assessment process,” Bromall said.

Patients should certainly be focused on safety, said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York. But she encouraged patients to look at other independent review platforms, such as Leap Frog’s ratings, which she said offered more robust data.

“I’m a big advocate of patients thinking about safety first,” Benjamin said. But patients should also ask “who is in network? Do you have health insurance?”

Need for safety amid high demand

Demand for health care has grown on Long Island and nationally as the baby boomer generation has aged. As of 2020, those 65 and older represented 16.8% of the population of the U.S., or 55.8 million people, according to the U.S. Census.

Employment in the health care and social assistance sector has climbed as well, to 263,611 people in the third quarter of 2025, the most recent period data is available, according to data from the New York State Department of Labor. That’s a 37% increase from the same period in 2010.

Patient safety has always been important, but hospital focus on safety has grown, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, Bromall said.

As demand continues to rise, hospitals need to have procedures in place to keep patients safe, no matter how busy they are, Silver said.