LiveLongAgeWell

It would be great if there was an objective “grading” or ranking of the best hospitals, and last week HealthGrades released their list of the top 50 hospitals in the United States (click on “see report” under HealthGrades Research). Their rankings are based on death and complication data from a list of 26 different medical procedures and conditions (like total hip replacement surgery and pneumonia), and the top 5% made their top 50 list.

I think that the list is interesting and helpful, but should not be relied on completely. Some hospitals that are widely recognized as among the nation’s best, such as the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, John’s Hopkins in Baltimore, and the Cleveland Clinic, did not appear on HealthGrade’s list. I was also interested to see that the list states: “Distinction cannot be used without a Licensing Agreement from Health Grades, Inc.”.  What does that mean? HealthGrades is a for-profit entity which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, and if you want to see an attempt at hospital ratings from a non-profit entity—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—check out this site called “Hospital Compare”.

Another widely recognized and well-regarded yearly ranking of hospitals appears in the magazine U.S. News and World Report, and you can access the 2008 report here.

If you look at all three rankings, you will see that of course none of them agree, though some hospitals appear on more than one list. Each ranking uses a different complex formula to reach their conclusions, and I certainly can’t say which is the best. For finding a good or “the best” hospital in my area, I would consult various rankings before I reached my conclusion, and these rankings would be only part of my information… like most medical studies, to get a “ranking of the best”, you can assemble whatever data you choose, then statistically analyze (some people say “massage”) the data in many different ways to reach a conclusion.