If you’re looking to find the best hospital near you or further away for a particular purpose, you may want to check out the ratings and reviews from the following organizations:
- Medicare’s Care Compare
- U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals
- Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals
- Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grade
- Healthgrades
Medicare’s Care Compare
U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals
The system leans heavily on patient outcomes, adequate staffing, clinically proven tools, expert opinions (what other physicians think about the hospital), and metrics about safety and readmissions.
U.S. News & World Report rankings offer especially good information for specialties in complex care, and “they also have increased reporting on common procedures and diagnoses,” Dr. Bilimoria says.
Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals
Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals recognizes excellence in essential medical procedures, offering patients a trusted resource for navigating critical healthcare decisions.
Using comprehensive data from commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid insurance claims, Castle Connolly evaluates hospitals and provides insights from a wide range of patients for a more complete picture of hospital performance across diverse populations.
The hospitals are evaluated on procedure volume, patient outcomes, quality of care, and physician expertise, including the number of Castle Connolly Top Doctors and hospital nominations received. Its methodology also includes performance metrics that track in-hospital safety events and evaluate a hospital’s ability to prevent adverse events after complications.
More than 6,400 hospitals are evaluated, and more than 1,400 hospitals across all 50 states are recognized for excellence in 20 medical procedures. Castle Connolly is a division of Everyday Health Group.
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade
Process and structure measures include whether there are tools to prevent medication errors, appropriate staffing, and strong leadership. Outcome measures represent what happens to a patient while receiving care, including medical accidents and injuries.
Healthgrades
The company creates predictive models that account for variations in patient populations and their complexity by using risk-adjusted data. Analysts compare their predictive outcome to actual outcomes at a facility, and star ratings are awarded based on whether the facility has outcomes that are statistically higher or lower than expectations.
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