Hospital Safety Grades: The Best And Worst In The Hudson Valley

A nationwide hospital safety analysis has found that just one hospital in the Hudson Valley received an "A" grade for preventing medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections, which collectively are the third leading cause of death in America. On the flip side most local hospitals received a "C." None received a "D."

The Leapfrog Group released its bi-yearly hospital safety grades on Tuesday, finding that hospitals overall have improved in reducing the number of avoidable deaths. The group assessed roughly 2,500 hospitals nationwide. Of those, 30 percent earned an "A," 28 percent earned a "B," 35 percent a "C," 6 percent a "D" and 1 percent an "F."

"The national numbers on death and harm in hospitals have alarmed us for decades. What we see in the new round of Safety Grades are signs of many hospitals making significant improvements in their patient safety record," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a release.

The assessment system assigns school-style letter grades to general acute-care hospitals. The hope is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital. Sometimes there is not enough information to issue a fair Safety Grade for every hospital. Certain hospitals are exempt from mandated public reporting and others simply do not have enough data available to assign a grade.

Here are the local hospitals graded by the Leapfrog Group, and the grades they earned:

A

Putnam Hospital Center

B

Northern Westchester Hospital

White Plains Hospital

C

Phelps Memorial Hospital Center

Westchester Medical Center

New York-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital

Nyack Hospital

St John's Riverside Hospital - Dobbs Ferry Pavilion

St. John's Riverside Hospital

New York-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital

St John's Riverside Hospital - ParkCare Pavilion

St. Joseph's Medical Center of Yonkers

Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital

St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital Cornwall Campus

St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital Newburgh Campus

Orange Regional Medical Center

Vassar Brothers Medical Center

MidHudson Regional Hospital of Westchester Medical Center

Image via Shutterstock