Hospitals

U.S. News releases Best Hospitals rankings

For the 28th time, U.S. News & World Report has released its list of Best Hospitals. Once again, Mayo Clinic claimed the number one spot on this year's Honor Roll, and Cleveland Clinic came in second.

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For the 28th year in a row, U.S. News & World Report has unveiled its list of Best Hospitals.

The annual rankings compare over 4,500 hospitals and health systems across the country. And they’re practically all-encompassing — they include ratings of 25 specialties, conditions and procedures.

Unsurprisingly, this year’s Honor Roll is practically a recycling of last year’s major players.

For the second consecutive year, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, nabbed the top spot. Cleveland Clinic came in second again. Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital was number three and Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital was number four, marking only a slight switch-up from last year’s list when Mass General was third and Johns Hopkins was fourth.

Other notable hospitals on the Honor Roll include UCSF Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Durham, North Carolina-based Duke University Hospital.

U.S. News also highlighted high-performing hospitals in multiple specialties. Cleveland Clinic was ranked number one in cardiology and heart surgery, while MD Anderson Cancer Center was first in the cancer category. New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery came in first for orthopedics. The number one hospitals in these specialties are exactly the same as they were last year.

As if that weren’t enough, the site also ranks the best hospitals in each state and in major metro areas.

That’s not all — the healthcare-related rankings go on and on. Earlier this summer, U.S. News compiled the Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll. The top three hospitals on the 2017-18 list are identical to those on the 2016-17 list: Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

In case it hasn’t been obvious, many of the hospitals that appear on each U.S. News list seem to come up every year, oftentimes in the same (or nearly the same) place they were in the year before. This trend has been noticed in the healthcare world, but it doesn’t stop the tendency from happening.

For hospitals, it’s a good thing. The fact that the rankings change so little year after year allows organizations like NewYork-Presbyterian to brag a little:

U.S. News asserts its rankings are based on objective information, including survival and readmission rates, patient experience, volume, patient safety and quality of nursing. And it should be noted that several methodology updates took place prior to the release of this year’s Best Hospitals list.

Photo: Ann Cutting, Getty Images

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