The Best Hospitals 2011 - 12: The Honor Roll

For medical excellence, there are 17 hospitals have a uncommon blend of depth and breadth. 

A place within the Best Hospitals Honor Roll is kept for medical-centers that reveal unusually high capability across numerous specialties, scoring near or at the top in as a minimum 6 of 16 specialties. Just 17 of the 5,000 hospitals assessed for the 2011-12 positions qualified. Hospitals with the highest-scores in a provided area of expertise received two Honor-Roll points; those with a little lower-scores received 1 point.* Honor Roll-standing was decided by the whole number of Honor Roll-points in all 16 specialties.

Rank	Hospital	Points	Specialties
1	Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore	30	15
2	Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston	29	15
3	Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.	28	15
4	Cleveland Clinic	26	13
5	Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles	25	14
6	New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, N.Y.	22	12
7	UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco	20	11
8	Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston	18	12
9	Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.	18	10
10	Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia	17	12
11	Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis	16	11
12	UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center	14	8
13	University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle	13	9
14	University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor	10	6
14	Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville	10	6
16	Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York	8	6
17	Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif.	7	6

The Methodology
Our target when we issued the first Best Hospitals annual-rankings in 1990 was to help-out people who are in need of strangely skilled inpatient-care, and that operation has not changed even in Year 22. The Best Hospitals rankings moderator medical-centers on their competency in closely such high stakes situations. For instance, a hospital ranked in heart and cardiology surgery—one of 16 specialties wherein centers were assessed—likely has the experience and expertise to restore a faulty heart-valve in a man of 90s. Many hospitals would reject to perform main surgery on old patients, as they ought to if they are not have the special techniques and safety measure required and do not treat many such patients. A ranked-hospital in gastroenterology can most likely offer the most suitable treatment to a patient whose inflammatory-bowel disease flares-up. At hospitals ranked in neurosurgery and neurology, surgeons have more spinal-tumors in many weeks than most community hospitals checked in a year. 

By compare, other hospital rankings and ratings for the most branches inspect how well hospitals care for relatively unthreatening situations or perform rather routine processes, for example hernia repair and simple heart bypass-surgery. The common patients need such usual care, so in support of them that approach to examining hospitals works well. But it go wrong for patients that are particularly at risk for reason of age, infirmities, physical condition, or the challenging condition of the surgery or further care they require.

A good approach to conclude how well a hospital performs with a medical test is to assess its performance in a range of claims within the area of expertise. U.S. News ranks in 16 different areas of expertise, from urology to cancer. In this year, only 140 out of the 4,825 hospitals are assessed as well-performed to rank in only one specialty. And out of the 140, just 17 hospitals evaluated for a mark on the Honor Roll via ranking near or at the top in seven or more areas of expertise.

Hospitals in other four specialties—ophthalmology, rehabilitation, psychiatry, and rheumatology—are ranked exclusively based on their status among specialists. Many of the cares in these areas of expertise is delivered on an out-patient basis, and therefore few patients expire.

To keep ranking of any out of the 12 data driven specialties, a hospital must meet-up any of 4 criteria: It may be a teaching-hospital, it may be affiliated with any medical-school, it must have as a minimum 200 beds, otherwise it must have as a minimum 100 beds in addition 4 or more of 8 main medical technologies, for example a PET/CT scanner and other precise radiation-therapies. In this year, 2,196 hospitals, otherwise 46% of the first number, met-up that test.

Eligibility in a special specialty needed hospitals to meet-up a volume-requirement. A hospital that failed still could get it through the gateway if nominated by as a minimum 1% of the physicians in an area of expertise who act in response to the 2010, and 2011 reputation surveys. That remained 1,879 hospitals entitled in at least one area of expertise. But only somewhat more than 7% of them performed well-enough to be ranked in any area of expertise.

In every specialty where a hospital was an applicant, it got a U.S. News-Score from 0 to 100 that were according to on four parts: reputation, patient safety, patient survival, and care related factors for example nursing and patient-services. The top 50 performers then were ranked. Data and scores for all qualifying-hospitals in each area of expertise are also posted. The four components and their weightings, in a word:

Survival score (32.5%). A hospital's achievement at keeping-up patients alive was determined by evaluating the number of Medicare-inpatients with some conditions who died in 30 days of admittance in 2007, 2008, and 2009 by the number likely to die given the sternness of illness. The Hospitals were score as of 1 to 10, within 10 showing the highest survival-rate as compare to further hospitals and 1 is the lowest-rate.

Patient-safety score (5%). Injurious blunders happen at each hospital; this score shows how difficult a hospital does to put-off six of the most shocking types. A 3 place a hospital between the 25% of the best hospitals, a 2 in central 50%, and a 1 in lowest%. Examples of the 6 types of medical-episodes factored-in are deaths of whose condition ought to not have put-up them at important risk and surgical incision that reopen.

Reputation (32.5%). Every year, about 200 physicians in every specialty are arbitrarily selected and requested to list hospitals they think as the best in their area of expertise for difficult or complex cases. A hospital's reputation score depends on the entire percentage of professionals in 2009, 2010, and 2011 who given name to the hospital. In this year a few physicians were requested to list-up to 5 hospitals, the rest to list-up to 10.

Other care related indicators (30%). These comprise technology, nurse staffing, and other measures-related to value of care. The American-Hospital-Association's 2009 review of all hospitals was the main resource.

In the rankings depended just on reputation, hospitals were listed-up on the base of reports to the most current 3 years of doctor surveys. Ranked-hospitals were cited by as a minimum 5% of related physicians.
The rankings were created for U.S. News by RTI-International, a foremost research association based in Research-Triangle-Park, N.C. Be assure to include your own fact gathering to ours; not all hospitals are the best for each patient.