The hospital landscape in Westchester is nothing if not interesting. In the past 18-24 months, we’ve seen nearly every community hospital in Westchester affiliate or partner with larger hospital systems to reap the benefits that scale can bring to cost effectiveness, hiring prestige, state-of-the-art technology, and administrative efficiency, among other things. It’s been a dizzying force of change in the industry, albeit one patients may or may not even notice.
What patients do notice is quality of care. And a new report ranking hospitals nationwide shows that patients in Westchester have mixed feelings about the care they are receiving at our hospitals.
Compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, The Hospital Compare List is based on patient responses to surveys conducted between January 1 and December 31, 2014. (At the end of their hospital stay, patients were asked to answer questions about the quality of care they received.) The list includes more than 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals around the country; they are ranked from 1 star (poorest quality of experience) to 5 stars (highest quality of experience), and the report is updated quarterly.
The most recent numbers, released earlier this month, show that nationwide, 309 hospitals received 5 stars; 1,135 hospitals received 4 stars; 922 hospitals were given 3 stars; 931 hospitals ranked as 2 stars; and 242 were given only 1 star.
Here’s how it broke down in Westchester:
5 stars: None
4 stars: Northern Westchester Hospital (Mount Kisco), Phelps Memorial Hospital Center (Sleepy Hollow), White Plains Hospital (White Plains)
3 stars: New York-Presbyterian/Hudson Valley Hospital (Cortlandt Manor)
2 stars: New York-Presbyterian/Lawrence Hospital (Bronxville), Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital (New Rochelle), St. John’s Riverside Hospital (Yonkers)
1 star: St. Joseph’s Medical Center (Yonkers), Montefiore Mount Vernon Hospital (Mount Vernon), Westchester Medical Center (Valhalla)
It’s worth noting that the number of patients responding to surveys for each hospital varied widely. Westchester Medical Center’s ranking, for example, was based on 794 responses, while St Joseph’s Medical Center’s rank came from 341 responses and Northern Westchester Hospital received 1,163 surveys.
Check out the complete database here.
