11 NYC hospitals were rated poor for patient safety

Ten hospitals and medical facilities across the city received low marks for patient safety in a newly released testimonial from a medical monitoring group.

Facilities that received a “D” from the Leapfrog Group include the City Council’s Kings County and Coney Island Hospitals, and Brooklyn’s Maimonides, Interfaith and Brookdale Hospitals; Flushing Hospital in Queens; three facilities operated by Montefiore Medical Center — the Einstein, Moses, and Wakefield campuses — in the Bronx and BronxCare Healthcare System.

Rating categories included infections, surgical issues, safety issues, error prevention practices, and management’s communication with hospital staff.

A group calling for an overhaul of Maimonides Hospital’s leadership said its poor grade confirms the group’s criticism of South Brooklyn’s largest private hospital.

“This nationally recognized report validates what we and tens of thousands of people in Brooklyn already know: Maimonides Hospital is a failing disaster, providing terrible service and requiring new leadership from the ground up,” said Mendy Reiner, co-founder of Save Maimonides.

“After several D grades in a row and even an F (in the fall of 2020), it’s evident that the people of Brooklyn are in dire need of better care than Maimonides.”

Hospitals that received a D declined requests for comment.

At the other end of the spectrum, hospitals that received an A for patient safety include City Hospitals Queens and North Central, NYU Langone Hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, according to the testimony.

No hospital in upstate New York received an “F”.

The head of NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens said he was “immensely proud” of the “A” given to Jamaica’s city-run Queens Hospital.

“Everyone at Queens plays an important role in the quality of care we provide to our patients, and it is gratifying when the results of that hard work are recognized by others,” Chief Executive Officer Neil Moore said in a statement. “This news is particularly positive for our patients who entrust us with their treatment. You can walk through our doors knowing that we are one of the safest hospitals in our city and state.”

The report marks the 10th anniversary of the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, which assigns a grade to nearly 3,000 US hospitals based on how well they protect patients from preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

An analysis by the Leapfrog Group claims patient safety has improved since hospitals began being ranked a decade ago.

“For five of the trackable outcome measures, these improvements are estimated to have saved more than 16,000 lives over the 10-year period,” said Leapfrog.

Cases of falls and trauma, as well as cases of objects left in the body after surgery, decreased by 25%, Leapfrog said.

“Never in history have we seen an overall improvement in patient safety to coincide with the history of the Hospital Safety Grade through this past decade,” said Leah Binder, President and CEO of the Leapfrog Group.

“We congratulate hospitals on this milestone and encourage them to accelerate their hard work to save patients’ lives… The big difference in this decade is that for the first time, we have publicly reported every hospital’s patient safety records, and that triggered the kind of change we were all hoping for. It’s not enough change, but we’re on the right track.”