Johns Hopkins Maintains Grip on Top Spot

Retaining the top spot on a list for consecutive years is difficult enough. Yet, somehow Johns Hopkins Hospital has kept its quality up enough to be named the best hospital by U.S. News and World Report for 22 consecutive years. That’s every year since it began publishing the list.

The publication evaluated 4,825 hospitals for its 2011-2012 rankings. Only 140 of those hospitals performed well enough to rank in one specialty and only 17 made the Honor Roll. To secure a place on the Honor Roll, the hospital must be at or near the top in six or more specialties.

Some of the categories used to rank the hospitals included death rates, balance of nurses to patients and a reputation score — physicians were surveyed and asked to name the hospitals they consider tops in their specialty.

The four categories were weighted with survival score and reputation worth 32.5% each. Care-related indicators that measure quality of care were worth 30% and patient safety was worth the least with 5%.

Of the nearly 5,000 hospitals, only 46% — 2,196 — met one of the four criteria necessary to be in the running. They were: be a teaching hospital; be affiliated with a medical school; have at least 200 beds; or have at least 100 beds plus at least four of eight key medical technologies.

Here are the 17 hospitals to make the Honor Roll:

1. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore

2. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

3. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

4. Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland

5. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

6. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, New York City

7. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco

8. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston

9. Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.

10. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

11. Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis

12. UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh

13. University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle

14. University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor

15. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville

16. Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City

17. Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif.

With the increasing importance of electronic medical records, U.S. News and World Report has also ranked the Most Connected Hospitals. The 118 hospitals that made this list have met the twin standards of being high-performing in one or more medical specialty and adopting information technology.

The list places hospitals in one of eight stages. Stage 0 hospitals have yet to start incorporating their health information technology into clinical care. Stage 7 hospitals have integrated all the way.

Only 1% of U.S. hospitals are considered Stage 7 and 3.5% are at Stage 6.

Here are the top 10 hospitals in the Stage 7.

1. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

2. University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics, Madison, Wis.

3. Stanford Hospital & Clinics, Stanford, Calif.

4. Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston

5. Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh

6. Children’s Medical Center Dallas, Dallas

7. Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, Norfolk, Va.

8. Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, Los Angeles

9. NorthShore Evanston Hospital, Evanston, Ill.

10. Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center, Woodland Hills, Calif.