US News: Cleveland Clinic Remains Top Heart Hospital

For the 19th consecutive year, the Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, OH) ranks number 1 for cardiology and heart surgery among the nation’s best hospitals, according to US News & World Report’s “America’s Best Hospitals,” published online July 16, 2013.

To rank hospitals in the cardiology field, US News arrived at an overall score determined primarily by 4 categories: reputation, patient survival, patient safety, and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services.

For 2013-2014, the Cleveland Clinic received the maximum score of 100, with 64.3% of responding specialists naming the institution as the best for handling difficult cardiology cases. The Cleveland Clinic also received the highest ratings for patient volume (14,785 Medicare inpatient discharges from 2009 to 2011) and nurse staffing (2.4 nurses per patient), as well as a much better than expected 30-day survival score for complex patients (10 on a 10-point scale, indicating the highest survival rate relative to other hospitals).

Of the more than 700 hospitals listed in the Cardiology and Heart Surgery category, the top 50 were ranked based on their overall score. All are experienced in treating difficult cases—a hospital is listed only if at least 1,321 inpatients in need of high-level expertise in the respective specialty were treated there in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Below are the top 10, with the top 2 remaining unchanged from the 2012-2013 rankings (table 1).

Table 1. Top 10 Cardiology and Heart Surgery Hospitals for 2013-2014

Rank

Reputation

Survival

1. Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, OH

64.3%

10

2. Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN

53.8%

9

3. NewYork-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
New York, NY

15.9%

10

4. Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore, MD

23.2%

9

5. Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Boston, MA

19.3%

9

6. Duke University Medical Center
Durham, NC

16.4%

9

7. Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA

17.6%

8

8. St. Francis Hospital
Roslyn, NY

2.0%

10

9. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, CA

7.3%

9

10. Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital
Houston, TX

15.9%

10


More than half of the top 10 heart and heart surgery hospitals also appear in the “honor roll” of the overall highest ranked hospitals, though not in the same order. Just 18 of the nearly 5,000 hospitals evaluated for 2013-2014 qualified by achieving high scores in at least 6 specialties. The final order was based on points, with 2 points awarded for ranking at or close to the top in a specialty and 1 point for coming in slightly lower. Johns Hopkins Hospital claimed the number 1 overall spot from Massachusetts General Hospital, which came in first last year (table 2).

Table 2. Top 10 ‘Honor Roll’ Hospitals for 2013-2014

Rank

Points

Specialties

1. Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore, MD

30

15

2. Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA

29

16

3. Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN

29

15

4. Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, OH

27

14

5. UCLA Medical Center
Los Angeles, CA

19

13

6. Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Chicago, IL

17

12

7. NewYork-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
New York, NY

17

10

7. UCSF Medical Center
San Francisco, CA

17

10

9. Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Boston, MA

16

10

10. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Pittsburgh, PA

15

10

 


Source:

US News Staff. Best Hospitals 2013-14: Overview and Honor Roll. US News & World Report. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/best-hospitals/articles/2013/07/16/best-hospitals-2013-14-overview-and-honor-roll. Published July 16, 2013. Accessed July 18, 2013.

 

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