YONKERS– Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla was judged one of the 10 worst hospitals nationwide.
St. Joseph’s Medical Center and St. John’s Riverside Hospital, both in Yonkers, and Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville were only a bit better in an upcoming issue of Consumer Reports, the nonprofit consumer research and product-testing organization based in Yonkers.
Detailed ratings are at ConsumerReports.org .
The ratings — published in the August issue of the magazine and online– are based on surveys of millions of patients nationwide, plus information from government and independent sources on patient outcomes, such as re-admissions, infections, complications, mortality, and certain hospital practices including CT scans, communications about medicines, and electronic record-keeping.
However, the ratings cover only 1,159 hospitals in 44 states and include only about 18% of hospitals. In Southern Westchester, for example, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital, Mt. Vernon Hospital, and Rye Hospital Center have not yet been rated. (The ratings include only 18 percent of U.S. hospitals because data on patient harm still isn’t reported fully or consistently nationwide.)
Other local hospitals did somewhat better in the ratings but still were rated with scores below 50 on a scale of 1-100. They are: White Plains Hospital Center and Sound Shore Medical Center of Westchester in New Rochelle.
“Hospitals that volunteer safety information, regardless of their score, deserve credit, since the first step in safety is accountability,” says John Santa, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center in Yonkers. But Dr. Santa also notes: “The safety scores provide a window into our nation’s hospitals, exposing worrisome risks that are mostly preventable. A consumer who enters a hospital thinking it’s a place to get better deserves to know if that is indeed the case. But the fact that consumers can’t get a full picture of most hospitals in the U.S. underscores the need for more public reporting.”
Saint joesph is a bad and nasty hospital i had a heart attack and they send me home and had a next one how do you not when a person is having a heart attack i laid in the waitted for 9 hours to get a bed and they wantted me to sleep on a streacher i should of sued them and sent me home with 35percent blockedge in my heart and i came back the same night with my second heart attack and had to rush me to montifore
amazing to see how low Valhalla is ….
….have seen Sound Shore in action couple of times…. was not super-impressed. White Plains a bit
better (impression from visits anyway).
We have always considered ourselves lucky to be near NYC and have always said if need anything scheduled
involving a hospital (i.e. not an emergency), NYC is where it’s happening. Your article just boosts that thought
Interesting (and good) thing available since about 11-12 years ago is state website showing how many times
specific doctors have performed specific procedures . FOr example, if a doctor is suggesting arthroscopic surgery
you can check out to see how many times he/she has done that. Results are surprising sometimes ….
What were the best hospitals within a 20min radius of Larchmont? How did Greenwich & Stamford rank?
The best in the metro area was NYU Langone Medical Center in NYC which scored a 56 –it’s maybe 25-30 miles away. But even tho it was best in our area, it did not score high enough to make the top ten nationwide.
Greenwich Hospital is not yet rated. Stamford hospital scored 51, which is pretty good and better than any of the Westchester ones mentioned in our area of Westchester. St. Vincent’s in Bridgeport got a 54 even better.
Hope this helps.
J. Newman