Lower Manhattan’s Only Hospital Gets Passing Grades from State Health Regulators, But Shines in Three Categories
Data compiled by New York State regulators about quality of healthcare paint a statistical portrait of New York Presbyterian-Lower Manhattan Hospital (LMH). Located at 170 William Street, LMH is the only major healthcare facility remaining in Lower Manhattan, and hosts 180 beds divided among five specialties: medical/surgical (127 beds), maternity (24), intensive care (13), neonatal intermedia care (eight), and coronary care (eight).
The Health Profile database maintained by the State’s Department of Health (DOH) notes that LMH offers services in departments ranging from Emergency, Ambulatory Surgery, and Maternity to Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Radiology, and Acute Renal Dialysis. LMH is also designated as a Primary Stroke Center, meaning that it is capable of treating acute ischemic strokes with comprehensive supportive care. (This is the lowest of three DOH designations for stroke care, the others being “Thrombectomy Capable Stroke Centers” and “Comprehensive Stroke Centers.”) LMH is further cited as a Level Two Perinatal Center, indicating that it is able to provide care for women and newborns at moderate risk, and that it operates a neonatal intensive care unit. (This is the second lowest of four rankings used by DOH for categorizing care for mothers and infants.)
In the calendar year 2020 (the most recent for which data are available), DOH notes that LMH performed 465 cardiovascular procedures, 600 gastrointestinal system procedures, and 2,915 births (divided among 1,430 spontaneous vaginal deliveries, 756 assisted vaginal deliveries, and 729 caesarean sections).
DOH ranks LMH as a “high performer” by three measures. For overall deaths, the facility logged a ratio of 0.85; compared to statewide value of 1.13. Its heart failure mortality rate was four out of 265 patients, which translates to a ratio of 15.09; less than half of the statewide value of 33.95. And for “postoperative hemorrhage or hematoma,” LMH notched a ratio of 0.00, which compares very favorably to the statewide average of 2.55. (For all three metrics, lower numerical scores denote better performance.)
In 21 other categories—including pneumonia mortality, acute stroke mortality, and complications (which gauges “common patient safety problems in the hospital”), DOH ranked LMH as an “average performer. For 38 other criteria (including deaths from cardiac surgery, deaths from stroke, and the number of patients who left the emergency room without being seen, DOH declined to measure or rank LMH, chiefly because there were too few instances of these occurrences to infer a statistically meaningful benchmark. In no category did DOH confer upon LMH its lowest ranking, “poor performer.”
In calendar years 2020, 2021, and 2022, DOH regulators inspected LMH 27 times. All but two of these visits resulted in no citations. One inspection, in January 2022, led to the issuance of three citations: one focused on “facilities, supplies, equipment maintenance,” another for LMH’s infection control program, and a third for quality improvement activities.” A separate inspection (in May 2021) resulted in a fourth citation, arising from regulations related to “patient rights: care in safe setting.” The DOH database notes that between August 2020 and July 2023, “there have been no enforcement actions against the operator of this facility.”
A spokesman for LMH did not respond to a request for comment.