U.S. News & World Report comes to the aid of patients
all over the US revealing
its “America’s
Best Hospitals,” a magazine that hit newsstands this weekend.
The magazine was the result of a survey conducted by Massachusetts
Health Quality Partners, which included 51,000 adult patients and 20,000
parents of pediatric patients. Also, the study included data from the American
Hospital Association and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. All these
data were collected and analyzed on behalf of US News by RTI International, a Research Triangle Park
nonprofit.
The survey included questions not only about doctors but
also about medical staff and their ability to handle patients and their
questions about their cases and necessary treatments. The hospitals were judged
not in routine procedures but in difficult cases across a specialty. Reputation
and death rate were also important factors in classifying the hospitals.
Moreover, to be considered for most lists, hospitals had to either
be affiliated with a medical school, a member of the Council of Teaching
Hospitals or employ at least six of 13 key technologies such as robotic
surgery. These qualifications are not met by two-thirds of US hospitals.
Overall, pediatricians were the ones ruling the
classification, with 95 percent parents happy about communication compared to
the 90 percent of adult patients. Communication was an important key in
patients’ care, with more than four out of five patients saying their own doctors
gave them clear explanations. Also, a little over half of patients said other doctors
or medical stuff always did that too.
From a total of 5,453 medical centers involved in the study,
170 hospitals were ranked in one or more specialties and just 19 of those reached
“honor roll” status. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near
the top in at least six of the list’s 16 specialties.
The magazine did not take into consideration veterans’ or
military hospitals because data were not available for them.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore
took the No. 1 overall spot among hospitals for the 18th year in a row.
The
other 18 best hospitals included Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Ronald Reagan
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic; Massachusetts General Hospitals,
Boston; New York-Presbyterian University Hospitals of Columbia and Cornell;
University of California, San Francisco medical Center; Brigham and Women’s
Hospital, Boston and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.; Hospital of
the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and University of Washington
Medical Center, Seattle; Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St.
Louis; University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor; UPMC-University
of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville; Stanford
Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif.; University of Chicago Medical Center; Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center, Los Angeles and Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn.
All
these hospitals ranked high in the following specialty areas: heart and heart
surgery, geriatric care, gynecology, cancer care, gastrointestinal disorders
and ear, nose and throat.
The
other ten specialties considered when classifying the hospitals were as
follows: endocrinology, kidney disease, neurology & neurosurgery,
ophthalmology, orthopedics, psychiatry, rehabilitation, respiratory disorders,
rheumatology and urology.
“America’s Best
Hospitals” follows “Best Children’s Hospitals” for 2008, which was released
last month by US News and World Report.
Anyone
who is interested in more than the list of hospitals above can find information
at health.usnews.com/sections/health/best-hospitals.
