Consumer Reports Labels 2 NYC Hospitals Among Least Safe In The Country
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Two New York hospitals and many patients are baffled at how they ended up in the bottom five on a nationwide Consumer Reports safety ranking.
Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn received a score of 22 points out of 100, while Harlem Hospital Center got just 20 points.
By comparison, New York Presbyterian got 32 points and Mount Sinai Medical Center got 30.
LINK: Learn Much More About The Safety Ratings
The rankings were tabulated by the magazine using six criteria: Infections, re-admissions, communication, CT scanning, complications, and mortality.
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Several former and current patients of Kings County said there have been times they've had to endure a long wait, but stressed the hospital itself is great.
"There's good doctors there and they help a lot of children here in the community," one woman told 1010 WINS' Holli Haerr.
"All the nurses was nice, the doctors was nice -- everything went well with me," another woman said.
A statement from the city's Health and Hospital Corporation said the magazine's report was flawed and did not use current information. If they had, the statement asserted that both hospitals would have scored significantly higher.
However, the director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, John Santa, told 1010 WINS that New York hospitals "deserve a pat on the back."
"We have ratings on 1,100 hospitals -- there are 6,000 across the country and New York hospitals are at least telling us what the situation is," Santa said. "In many other states, there is much less information."
Santa said the findings indicate that hospitals were not prioritizing safety as much as many would like.
Other Tri-State Area hospitals that were included in the bottom 10 include Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood, N.J. (24 points) and Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. (25 points).
Meanwhile, the hospital that scored the highest was the Billings Clinic in Billings, Montana with 72 points.
Do you agree with the ratings? Do you think the right criteria was used? Share your thoughts in the comments section below...
