U.S. News Releases ‘Best Hospitals’ Rankings Amid Changes

In this year’s “Best Hospitals” rankings from U.S. News & World Report, released Tuesday, there is no first place.

Amid pushback regarding several of its rankings, including those for hospitals and medical schools, U.S. News announced last month that its annual Honor Roll of top hospitals would see a marked change this year.

“While we continue to value the usefulness of the Honor Roll in identifying broad clinical excellence, we also believe that the current format obscures the fact that all of the Honor Roll hospitals have attained the highest standard of care in the nation,” leaders from U.S. News wrote in a public letter.

“As a result, after months of deliberation, we have changed the format of the Honor Roll list,” they added. “Specifically, there will be no ordinal ranking for hospitals selected for this year’s Honor Roll when that list is ultimately published. U.S. News will continue to publish ordinal rankings for 15 specialties and in each region where we have previously published rankings.”

That was indeed the case when the annual “Best Hospitals” rankings were released Tuesday.

Though the Honor Roll was very much in line with last year’s iteration, the hospitals were simply listed in alphabetical order.

In years past, the No. 1 spot on the Honor Roll tended to come as no surprise, with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota nabbing a first-place finish for 7 consecutive years before this year’s change.

“We are honored that Mayo Clinic is once again the nation’s top-ranked hospital across the most specialties,” Gianrico Farrugia, MD, president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, said in a statement. “Our staff work tirelessly to deliver the highest level of care to every Mayo Clinic patient. Today’s recognition is a testament to them and their daily commitment to providing hope and healing to those in need, and to their creativity, ingenuity and drive to create the future of healthcare.”

Another fixture at the top of the Honor Roll, NYU Langone Health, also weighed in on the change.

NYU Langone Health “once again stands out” in the rankings, spokesperson Steve Ritea said in a statement provided to MedPage Today in an email. “While we are honored by this accolade, U.S. News no longer publishes numeric rankings for the country’s top-performing hospitals or meaningful rankings in major regional markets, limiting patients’ access to that data.”

For specialties, which continue to be ranked, Ritea noted that NYU Langone Health was “proud to earn top 10 rankings in 10 specialties,” including a first-place finish in neurology and neurosurgery for the second year in a row.

“Vizient, Inc., the Leapfrog Group and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid also consistently give NYU Langone top marks for quality and safety,” he added. “The public should have full access to rankings like those released by U.S. News in order to ensure patients always know where they will receive the best outcomes.”

Indeed, public access to information that can help patients find high-quality care is one thing that U.S. News has continued to stress — even amid certain criticism of its rankings.

In June, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, part of Penn Medicine, announced that it would no longer actively participate in the “Best Hospitals” rankings.

Addressing the recent decision and this year’s rankings, Kevin Mahoney, MBA, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, said in a statement provided to MedPage Today in an email that Penn Medicine remains “committed to our decision to shift focus away from U.S. News & World Report to continue to prioritize enhancing the excellent care our patients count on us to provide.”

“While Penn Medicine has always ranked well, and this year’s numbers are better than ever, we remain concerned that the [underlying] methodology used to determine the yearly rankings does not account for the full and diverse settings where healthcare is delivered,” Mahoney added. “The methodology excludes most care provided in outpatient settings, care at home, or by telemedicine, for example, and it does not place value on innovation, life-saving research, or educating and training our nation’s future healthcare professionals, which are foundational to Penn Medicine’s mission.”

A number of other hospitals that have regularly placed at the top of the U.S. News Honor Roll have either declined to share any updates on their respective positions on the rankings or have not responded to requests for comment on the matter.

Other pushback regarding the “Best Hospitals” rankings has included that from St. Luke’s University Health Network, which announced in May that its system of hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey would no longer respond to requests for data from U.S. News, and from San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who said in June that he had sent a letter to U.S. News seeking information on the rankings. The letter also urged the outlet to “publicly disclose the payments it receives from the hospitals it endorses, as required by federal regulations,” Chiu said in an announcement.

However, at the time, a spokesperson for U.S. News told MedPage Today in an emailed statement that it “categorically disagrees with the assumptions and conclusions in the City Attorney’s letter.”

As for this year’s rankings, in addition to the Honor Roll change, U.S. News noted several more modifications that included the introduction of outpatient outcomes in certain specialty and surgical ratings, the expanded inclusion of other outpatient data, an increased weight on objective quality measures, and a reduced weight on expert opinion.

This year’s Honor Roll is included below, with full rankings for specialties as well as regions available here.

Best Hospitals Honor Roll 2023-2024

Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Saint Louis

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles

Cleveland Clinic

Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia

Houston Methodist Hospital

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

Mount Sinai Hospital, New York

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell

North Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health, Manhasset, NY

Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago

NYU Langone Hospitals, New York

Rush University Medical Center, Chicago

Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California

UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

UC San Diego Health-LaJolla and Hillcrest Hospitals, San Diego

UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco

University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor

UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee