Nyack Hospital Gets High Marks in New Rankings

Nyack Hospital has earned an “A” rating on the new Hospital Safety Scorecard from the Leapfrog Group.

Only 17.9 percent of New York hospitals measured received an “A” grade -- 25 out of 140 hospitals.

The Hospital Safety Score is compiled under the guidance of patient safety experts and administered by The Leapfrog Group, a national, independent nonprofit. Hospital Safety Scores are assigned by Leapfrog to more than 2,500 hospitals across the nation twice annually.

The Hospital Safety Score grades hospitals on how safe they keep their patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. It is peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety, is free to the public and is to give consumers information they can use to protect themselves and their families when facing a hospital stay.

It uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single A, B, C, D, or F score.

• Process Measures represent how often a hospital gives patients recommended treatment for a given medical condition or procedure. For example, “Use antibiotics right before surgery” measures how often a hospital gives patients an antibiotic within one hour before surgery.
• Structural Measures represent the environment in which patients receive care. For example, “Doctors order medications through a computer” represents whether a hospital uses a special computerized system to prevent medication errors.
• Outcome Measures represent what happens to a patient while receiving care. For example, “Dangerous object left in patient’s body” measures how many times a patient undergoing surgery had a dangerous foreign object, like a sponge or tool, left in his or her body.

Here are the scores listed for hospitals in Putnam, Rockland and Westchester Counties:

• Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital: C
• New York Presbyterian-Hudson Valley Hospital: B
• New York-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital: B
• Northern Westchester Hospital: A
• Nyack Hospital: A
• Phelps Memorial Hospital Center: B
• Putnam Hospital Center: B
• St. John’s Riverside Hospital-Dobbs Ferry Pavilion: B
• St. John’s Riverside Hospital: B
• St. Joseph’s Medical Center of Yonkers: D
• Westchester Medical Center: C
• White Plains Hospital: C

To view the details, visit www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.