Which CNY Hospital Ranked Highest New Safety Ratings Released

Syracuse, NY (November 8, 2017) – St. Joseph’s Health Hospital received the highest rating of all Onondaga County hospitals in the latest Leapfrog^® Hospital Safety Grade (www.hospitalsafetygrade.org), which was released on Tuesday, October 31.

St. Joseph’s received a “B” grade from Leapfrog, while Crouse Hospital received a “C” grade and SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital received a “D” grade.

“Ratings like these represent our hospital’s success in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors,” said Leslie P. Luke, president and CEO at St. Joseph’s Health. “Leapfrog analyzes everything from our culture and our leadership, to our staff’s communication with each other and with patients, to patient recovery, infection rates, and even hand hygiene.”

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade indicates how safe general acute-care hospitals are for patients. Publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and secondary data sources such as the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and HIT Supplement are weighted and then combined to produce a single, consumer-friendly composite score that is published as an A, B, C, D or F letter grade.

The Leapfrog Group calculates a Safety Grade for approximately 2,600 general, acute-care hospitals for which there is sufficient publicly available data. The Safety Grade is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. It is updated every six months, once in the fall and once in the spring.

St. Joseph’s Health Hospital was also recently recognized for the third consecutive year as a “Best Regional Hospital” and ranked #9 in New York State by U.S. News & World Report^® (up from its #13 ranking last year).

St. Joseph’s is the only hospital in our region to have achieved this recognition – receiving the “Best in Central New York” designation. And St. Joseph’s is ranked as a high performing hospital in ALL NINE procedure areas that are measured, as well as a new specialty area added this year:

1. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair
2. Aortic Valve Surgery
3. Colon Cancer Surgery
4. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
5. Heart Bypass Surgery
6. Heart Failure
7. Hip Replacement Surgery
8. Knee Replacement Surgery
9. Lung Cancer Surgery
10. *NEW* this year: Orthopedics

There are nearly 200 hospitals in New York, which means that U.S. News & World Report ranked St. Joseph’s among the top 5% of all hospitals in the state.

About St. Joseph’s Health

St. Joseph’s Health is a non-profit regional health care system based in Syracuse, N.Y., providing services to patients throughout Central New York and northern Pennsylvania. From primary to specialty to home care, to our Magnet-recognized hospital, and in collaboration with our community partners, St. Joseph's Health is advancing the health of the communities we serve through an expanding range of healthcare services to ensure our patients achieve optimum long-term health. Ranked by Consumer Reports among the top 15 heart surgery centers in the country, U.S. News “Best Regional Hospital” and a 15-time winner of the National Research Corporation Consumer Choice award, St. Joseph’s is widely recognized for quality, value and delivering the highest patient satisfaction. St. Joseph’s Health is affiliated with Franciscan Companies and St. Joseph’s Physicians and is a member of Trinity Health.

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