A technique for performing health binning in a storage system includes in response to a block having a retention time below a first threshold and a read count below a second threshold, utilizing a first error metric for health binning. The first error metric is a current error metric for the block. In response to the block having a retention time above a third threshold that is greater than or equal to the first threshold or a read count above a fourth threshold that is greater than or equal to the second threshold, utilizing a second error metric that is not the same as the current block error metric for health binning.