5 LI hospitals get A's, 2 D's in ranking on patient safety

Five Long Island hospitals scored an A and two were given a D in patient safety in a ranking by a national medical quality group.

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit founded by large companies to improve health care quality, last week issued its sixth safety report on more than 2,500 hospitals.

Using data on 28 measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the American Hospital Association's Annual Survey from 2010 to 2013, the group graded hospitals from A to F on how well they prevented errors, injuries, infections and drug mix-ups.

For the sixth time, both John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson and Roslyn's St. Francis Hospital, which is part of Catholic Health Services, scored A's. And for the second time in a row, Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow and St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson scored A's. South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside also scored an A.

St. Joseph Hospital in Bethpage, part of Catholic Health Services, and Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Patchogue scored D's.

Overall, New York scored 25th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., with 22 percent of hospitals scoring A's. Maine scored No. 1 with 67 percent of its hospitals getting A's.

Dr. Patrick O'Shaughnessy, chief medical officer for Catholic Health Services, said that at the time of the survey St. Joseph didn't have an electronic medical records system and was in the process of changing the way it staffed its intensive care unit -- both of which Leapfrog says help reduce unnecessary deaths and injuries.

"Today, St. Joseph is a different campus," with electronic medical records and changes in ICU staffing, he said.

Brookhaven spokeswoman Carolyn Villegas said Brookhaven doesn't respond to Leapfrog's survey of about 1,400 hospitals and so the score "really doesn't mean too much."

She also pointed out that the Health Association of New York State in a report published in October 2013 that looked at the hospital report cards of 10 different groups rated Leapfrog with one star out of three. The Health Association report faulted Leapfrog for using its own survey, "which has not been shown to be evidence based."

But Leapfrog spokeswoman Erica Mobley said ratings are not dependent on whether a hospital participates in Leapfrog's survey. For those hospitals that don't, ratings are derived from data from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the other agencies and are weighted accordingly, she said.

Except for this latest report card, Leapfrog has given Brookhaven a C rating since 2012. Mobley said that Brookhaven's scores don't so much show a decline as much as other hospitals have shown improvement in patient safety.