Quality and Safety

We strive to provide the best care possible at Stony Brook University Hospital.
We value your participation in the healthcare.  This website provides you with a better understanding of the quality of the care that is provided as well as areas we are targeting for improvement.

Stony Brook University Hospital’s organizational values are:  I CARE (Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Excellence). As part of our desire for accountability and excellence we invite you to review our progress as we move toward becoming a High Reliability Organization, an error-free organization, over time.  As we continue our journey to become a world-class organization, we wish to promulgate an environment in which patients and families become the center of their care, a movement known as Patient- and Family-Centered Care.

If you have any suggestions on how we may become more reliable with a focus on Patient- and Family-Centered Care, please let us know by emailing us at sbuh_Quality@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.  This is our way to share with you the latest information and data available to support our efforts to improve quality and patient safety.

Recent efforts in the quality and patient safety arena earned us local and national recognition.  Here is a sample of a few of our accomplishments.  We hope you find this information helpful.

• For the third consecutive year, Stony Brook University Medical Center has been recognized as one of the nation’s "Most Wired" hospitals, according to the results of the 2011 Most Wired Survey released in the July issue of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
• Named as one of America’s Most Beautiful Hospitals for 2011, ranking third in a list of 50 healthcare facilities around the country by Soliant Health.
• 2011 Outstanding Leadership Award for Achievements in Eliminating Central Line Associated Bloodstream Infections from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of Healthcare Quality and the Critical Care Societies Collaborative
• 2011 National Association of Public Hospitals (NAPH) Safety Net Patient Safety Award recipient for submission that described SBUMC’s efforts to decrease severe sepsis mortality.
• Ranked 10th in the New York metropolitan area in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” Metro Area rankings for 2010-2011.
• Received “Special Recognition” by the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS). Stony Brook’s “Standardization to Prevent Venous Thromboembolism” process was described and lessons learned were detailed in the HANYS publication, “2010 Profiles in Quality and Patient Safety.”
• Poster receives top award at National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) conference. Stony Brook Children’s Hospital presented a poster detailing the Hospital’s initiative to decrease central line associated blood stream infections at the NACHRI Creating Connections Conference. The poster titled “Central Venous Catheter Infections in Pediatric Oncology: An Educational Strategy to Minimize Rates and Embed Practice Change” demonstrated an 84 percent reduction in central line infections since baseline surveillance was begun in 2008.
• NAPH released a Research Brief on its collaboration with the National Patient Safety Foundation and Kaiser Community Benefit Fund to bring patient safety education and training initiatives to members through The Patient Safety Initiative at America’s Public Hospitals. SBUMC was featured in this report due to the Patient Safety Fridays program deployed last year. NAPH CEO Bruce Siegel commended us on this challenging but crucial patient safety project we committed to implementing, which institutionalized our safety activities. The process will be continued through 2011, aimed at improving the safety culture of our institution through leadership participation and engagement of frontline staff.
• American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® (GWTG) Stroke Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award. To receive the award, SBUMC achieved 85 percent or higher adherence to all GWTG-Stroke Performance Achievement indicators for 24 consecutive months and achieved Plus level by reaching 75 percent or higher compliance with 6 of 10 GWTG-Stroke Quality Measures.
• Honorable Mentions for the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council’s 2010 Excellence in Patient Safety Award for “Fostering Organization-Wide Use of Failure Mode and Effect Analyses” and “Standardization to Prevent Venous Thromboembolism.”
• “Patient Safety Friday (PSF) a 24/7 State of Mind - An Innovative Approach to Foster Patient Safety in the Hospital Setting,” poster ranked at the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) Conference.
• Consumer Choice Award for 2010-2011 from the National Research Corporation (NCR). The award honors Stony Brook as the highest rated hospital in the New York, Newark, NJ, and Edison, PA, metropolitan statistical areas in the areas for Best Doctors, Best Nurses, Best Overall Quality, and Best Overall Image/Reputation.
• LIVESTRONG® Community Impact Project Award recipient. SBUMC is the first medical center in New York State to secure the award.
• Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center has been designated a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence by the American College of Radiology (ACR).
• Kidney Transplant Program receives a bronze medal from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in recognition of the work done to increase the capacity of the transplant center to perform kidney transplants.
• Designated a Gold Level Start! Fit-Friendly Company, which is recognition by the American Heart Association for championing the health of our employees and creating an environment of supporting physical activity in the workplace.
• SBUMC is the only hospital in New York to formally partner with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on reducing its carbon footprint through the EPA’s Green Memorandum of Understanding.
• Gastroenterology was named to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2010-11 Best Hospitals (August 2010 issue). 
• Recognized as the best performing hospital on Long Island by the Niagara Health Quality Coalition in its eighth annual report card published May 31, 2010, scoring best in more areas than any other Island hospital, including heart attack and congestive heart failure rates.
• Awarded a Partner for Change with Distinction Award from Practice Greenhealth, which recognizes healthcare facilities that have achieved improvement in their mercury elimination, waste reduction, and pollution prevention programs beyond the Partner for Change basic criteria.
• Cleverley + Associates recognized SBUH with a 2010 Community Value Leadership Award 100 and Five-Star Hospital in the State of the Hospital Industry 2010 Edition. The Community Value Index (CVI®) provides a measure of the value a hospital provides the community, and is composed of 10 measures of a hospital’s performance in the areas of financial viability and plant investment, hospital cost structure, hospital charge structure, and quality performance.
• Assemblyman Robert K. Sweeney presented a 2010 NYS Proclamation in recognition of continuous prostate cancer screening efforts in Suffolk County.
• SBUMC received an Organ Donor Bronze Medal of Honor from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in recognition of the Medical Center’s achievement of an 83 percent conversion rate for the period of October 2008 through March 2010.
• The Stony Brook University Hospital Auxiliary was honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) for its years of dedicated and ongoing service to the community.
• Aetna designated SBUMC a Center of Excellence for its Kidney Transplant Program.
• Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) effort to improve assessment rates and outcomes was ranked in the top ten percent of all applications submitted to the Hospital Association of New York State (HANYS) for the Pinnacle Award for Quality and Patient Safety.
• SBUMC becomes a Mentor Hospital for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) for quality initiatives related to Rapid Response Teams, Surgical Safety Checklist, and treatment of acute myocardial infarction patients, and continues to function as an IHI Mentor Hospital for Daily Goal Sheets and Central Line Infections.
• A poster titled “Decreasing Central Venous Catheter Infections in Pediatric Oncology Patients,” that depicted the successful efforts of the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Team was awarded second prize at the American Pediatric Surgical Nurses Association Conference. The association requested that a summary of the initiative be presented at their 2011 conference.
• The electrophysiology (EP) team were recognized by Hansen Medical for completing their 30th arrhythmia treatment procedure using the Sensei® Robotics Platform. Over the past 14 months, the SBUMC Electrophysiology Program has performed the largest number of flexible robotic procedures in New York, and has become a top user in the tri-state area.

We are interested in your feedback and questions. Please send email to: sbuh_Quality@notes.cc.sunysb.edu to let us know if this is helpful, or if you need something you can't find here.