Getting Great Care Near Home

Great Care Near Home

How we identified and ranked the top hospitals state by state

by Ben Harder 

I

F YOU’RE LIKE MOST people facing hospitalization, you’d prefer to stay close to home. It’s more convenient. It might avoid a hefty bill for out-of-network care. Friends and family may be able to visit you. And getting follow-up care from the same medical team will be more practical.

Our Best Regional Hospitals listings showcase nearly 500 hundred hospitals around the U.S. that offer high-quality care across a range of clinical services. These services include both complex, highly specialized care for the sickest patients – the focus of the Best Hospitals specialty rankings (see Page 110) – and safe, effective treatment for those whose medical needs are more commonplace, such as patients seeking hip or knee replacement surgery for age-related arthritis. The Best Regional Hospitals rankings, found in their entirety at usnews.com/bestregionalhospitals, offer readers in most parts of the country a number of high-quality choices near home.

These evaluations include ratings of how well hospitals handle 20 relatively common procedures and conditions in addition to their assessments in 11 specialties.* The 20 areas of care are colon cancer surgery, lung cancer surgery, ovarian cancer surgery, prostate cancer surgery, uterine cancer surgery, heart attack, heart failure, heart bypass surgery, heart valve surgery, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, stroke, back surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, hip fracture, diabetes, kidney failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Hospitals are assigned a rating of “high performing,” “average” or “below average” in each area in which they treated enough patients to be evaluated.

Recognition as a Best Regional Hospital means a hospital was nationally ranked in at least one of 11 specialties, or that it earned at least seven “high performing” ratings across the procedures and conditions. Each such hospital also had to meet certain other criteria; an FAQ at usnews.com/best-hospitals offers more details.

USNEWS.COM/BESTHOSPITALS

Visit usnews.com regularly while researching your health care choices, as U.S. News often adds content aimed at helping patients and families make decisions about their medical care. We also update the Best Hospitals content and data on the website when new information becomes available.

The Best Regional Hospitals appear

ranked by state on the following pages. Hospitals are numerically ordered according to the following rules: 1. The higher rank went to the hospital with the better status in the Best Hospitals Honor Roll ranking (Page 109), if applicable.

*Cancer; cardiology & heart surgery; diabetes & endocrinology; ear, nose & throat; gastroenterology & GI surgery; geriatrics; obstetrics & gynecology; neurology & neurosurgery; orthopedics; pulmonology & lung surgery; and urology.

2. Next, the higher rank went to the hospital that earned more points according to the following three rules: (a) A hospital received two points for each of the 11 specialties in which it was ranked among the top 50. (b) A hospital received one point for each specialty, procedure or condition in which it was rated high performing. (c) A hospital lost one point for each procedure or condition in which it was rated below average. Certain rare exceptions apply.

Based on the same rules, hospitals in major metropolitan areas also were ranked against other top hospitals in the metropolis. Our website displays these rankings for 92 metro areas with approximately 500,000 or more residents. The website also lists top hospitals in more than 100 U.S. News-defined regions, such as Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, the Ozarks in Arkansas and the Florida Panhandle, to help consumers outside the biggest urban centers searching for high-quality care.

Our goal with the state and metro area rankings is to identify general medicalsurgical hospitals that provide both breadth and quality, so only hospitals that deliver a wide range of clinical services for adults were considered for the Best Regional Hospitals rankings.

Pediatric care did not factor into these rankings; instead, children’s hospitals are separately ranked by region (Page 210) based on their performance across the 10 children’s specialties (Page 165).

How a hospital performed in ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation and rheumatology did not factor into the Best Regional Hospitals rankings, either. While these four specialties are undeniably important, many hospitals treat few, if any, inpatients in these specialty areas. Additionally, specialty hospitals such as dedicated cancer centers, surgical hospitals and rehabilitation facilities were not considered for the regional rankings.

When choosing a hospital, you’ll want to consult with your physician or other health professional and combine your own research with ours to find the best possible care. l

MAINE MEDICAL CENTER IN PORTLAND

Tops at Routine Care

U.S. NEWS EVALUATED nearly 4,500 hospitals on their performance in 20 common procedures and conditions, ranging from treatment for stroke to surgery for colon cancer. While many hospitals demonstrated certain areas of strength, only these four hospitals were high performing in all 20 types of care.

l Barnes-Jewish Hospital

St. Louis, Missouri l Cedars-Sinai Medical

Center

Los Angeles, California l Mayo Clinic

Rochester, Minnesota l NYU Langone Hospitals

New York, New York