VIEWPOINT: N.Y.’s Hospital Quality Remains Among the Worst in the U.S.

The federal government recently updated its hospital quality ratings, and New York once again fell near the bottom. Among 132 New York hospitals that received a rating, the average grade was 2.5 out of 5 stars, which ranked 48th out of the 50 states. That marked a slight improvement from last year, when New York ranked 49th with an average score of 2.4 stars. The 2025 average puts New York just ahead of New Mexico and Mississippi and just behind Alabama, Arkansas and West Virginia — all of which are among the poorest states in the country. New York boasts the highest gross state product per capita in the U.S., and spends at higher-than-average levels on health care generally and hospital care in particular. According to the most recent National Health Expenditures data, from 2020, New York per capita hospital expenditures were 43 percent higher than the national average. Looking more closely at the latest ratings, New York’s share of hospitals receiving the highest rating of 5 stars, at 10.1 percent, was one point higher than the national average. However, the state had a relatively low numbers of hospitals receiving 4 stars, and relatively high numbers of facilities receiving 1 or 2 stars. Broken down by ownership, the state’s eight veterans’ hospitals received the highest average of 3.5. Not-for-profit hospitals averaged 2.6 and government-owned hospitals averaged 1.7. The latter group included ratings for 10 New York City Health + Hospitals facilities that received an average score of 1.5. Those city-owned hospitals handle a disproportionate share of low-income and uninsured patients, and the federal ratings are not adjusted for poverty. Regionally, hospitals on Long Island and in the Mid-Hudson and Capital regions had the highest averages, while hospitals in the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, and New York City had the lowest averages. Ratings for individual hospitals can be looked up on the Medicare.gov website. New York has scored near the bottom in the federal hospital ratings — in other similar report cards — for at least the past decade, with the state taking little obvious action to draw attention to the problem or improve their performance. However, that might soon change: The chairwoman of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Commission on the Future of Health Care, Sherry Glied, has said the panel’s overdue report will include recommendations for tackling hospital quality. “There are real deficiencies in hospital quality in New York … across the state,” Glied, dean of the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, told the Albany Times Union in June. “[It’s] really not acceptable. The state ought to be shifting its funding that it’s giving to hospitals in a way that really takes those quality considerations into account.” The commission’s first round of recommendations was originally due in late 2024, but they have not yet been made public.      

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Bill Hammond is senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, which says it is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank located in Albany that promotes public-policy reforms grounded in free-market principles, personal responsibility, and the ideals of effective and accountable government. Hammond tracks developments in New York’s health-care industry, with a focus on how decisions made in Albany and Washington, D.C. affect the well-being of patients, providers, taxpayers, and the state’s economy.