Full List: Central New York Hospital Safety RatingsFrom the August 2012 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
We [Consumer Reports] have safety Ratings for 1,159 of the 6,268 hospitals in the U.S. They’re presented to magazine readers in four regional editions. A national list of all hospitals with a safety score is available on our iPad edition and to website subscribers at
ConsumerReports.org/hospitalratings. That page also gives information on more than 3,000 other hospitals that don’t have enough data for a safety score but for which we have some information. It also includes a full description of our methodology. Reporting periods vary depending on the hospital and the rating category. All data except infection information come from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Infection data come from states and the Leapfrog Group.
Safety score combines six categories of hospital safety into a score between 1 and 100. Displayed scores are rounded, but hospitals are listed in order of their precise score. Look for large differences between hospitals; small differences are not meaningful. We also show a hospital’s rating in four of those categories: infections, readmissions, communication, and scanning. Each gets up to 20 points of the safety score. We footnote hospitals that are better or worse than the average in complications and mortality, each worth up to 10 points. Those without footnotes are average or similar.
Infections reflects a hospital’s success in avoiding infections from central-line catheters used in intensive-care units and/or infections after cesarean section, hernia repair, hip or knee replacement, hysterectomy, spinal fusion, or coronary bypass, colon, or gallbladder surgery.
Readmissions represents the chance that a patient who has had a heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia will have to be readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of his or her initial discharge.
Communication indicates how clearly staff explain new medications and discharge planning to patients.
Scanning reflects the percentage of chest and/or abdominal CT scans that are ordered twice for the same patient, once with contrast and once without.
Complications looks at a set of eight adverse events, including bedsores, collapsed lungs, central-line-associated bloodstream infections, and accidental punctures or cuts during surgery, as well as four post-surgical complications: bloodstream infections, hip fractures, blood clots in the lungs or legs, and the reopening of wounds.
Mortality assesses a set of six causes of death in the hospital: heart attack, heart failure, stroke, stomach bleeding, hip fracture, and pneumonia.
