Effective 12-8-23: Due to Flu Season, all SLH Hospital Visitors must be 12 years of age or older; 2 visitors are permitted to a room.
St. Lawrence Health

Patient Rights and Privacy

NOTICE OF ROCHESTER REGIONAL HEALTH AND ST. LAWRENCE HEALTH AFFILIATION

EFFECT ON ACCESS TO PATIENT INFORMATION THROUGH THE STATEWIDE HEALTH INFORMATION NETWORK OF NEW YORK (“SHIN-NY”).

Notice of Rochester Regional Health and St. Lawrence Health Affiliation; Effect on access to patient information through the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (“SHIN-NY”). [Read the Affiliation Agreement.]

Forms and Notice

Below you will find links to our advance directives, patient proxy, patient rights in New York State, and patient privacy.  To learn more about patient rights, contact our Patient Advocacy Manager: (315) 261-6005

Patient Relations

As a partner in your or your loved one's care, you are encouraged to speak up. We love to hear the good, and we really need to hear the bad, too, as we are committed to continuous improvement.

You may address concerns directly with your health care team, and/or by calling one of the numbers below. Our patients are randomly surveyed by mail through an independent third party, Research Corporation. By law, surveys include the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Providers and Health care Systems, a set of questions proven to provide reliable and valid measures of a patient's experience of his or her care. We use these measures continuously to educate staff, develop initiatives, and guide everything from facilities design, to infection prevention, to meal preparation - all aspects of what we do every day that impact the outcome of care.

Relations Contact Information

It is your right to contact a regulatory agency; before you do that, please give us the opportunity to address your concerns with you.

Patient complaints or compliments: (315) 261-6005 or (315) 261-5041

Confidential compliance hotline: (315) 261-5005

Regulatory Agency Contacts:
USDHHS (OIG) 1-800-447-8477 (Fraud and abuse)
NYSDOH 1-800-804-5447 (For complaints about hospital care)
DNV (Accrediting Organization) 1-866-523-6842
For more information, visit the Office of the Inspector General

Quality

Several independent organizations rate hospital quality based on certain features of care that have been proven to impact health outcomes. St. Lawrence Health strives to meet or exceed benchmarks for reliable and valid measurements of quality. Some benchmarks do not apply and, in some cases, a rating may not be available because our hospitals don't perform enough of a particular type of procedure to make the rating statistically significant. In other words, the rating would not be reliable or valid.

Quality Contact Information

If you have questions about any of these organizations' ratings, contact the organization directly, contact CPHcontact GH, or contact MH.

US Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Hospital Compare
About Hospital Compare
The Leapfrog Group (ratings from a consortium of Fortune 500 companies and others concerned with health care quality)

Canton-Potsdam Hospital and Gouverneur Hospital are accredited by det Norske Veritas Health care (DNV-GL), one of the largest global quality rating organizations. Click here to learn more. 

Standards

Our Standards of Behavior unite us in a common purpose of making a positive difference for our patients and community. The Standards encompass professional codes of conduct and ethics, as well as practices that everyone would regard as "common courtesy." We also hold ourselves to national and state standards of quality through regular review of quality data, and oversight by our Board of Directors, accrediting bodies, and regulatory agencies.

Standards of Behavior

St. Lawrence Health uses the following Service Excellence Standards of Behavior:

  • Commitments to our patients
  • Commitments to each other
  • Sense of ownership/accountability
  • Waiting/responsiveness
  • Appearance
  • Attitude/courtesy
  • Privacy/confidentiality
  • Safety awareness
  • Etiquette