CA's 64 Best Hospitals: Latest U.S. News Rankings

U.S. News & World Report has released its latest rankings of the best hospitals in the United States with an updated methodology that emphasizes two new patient-centric measures. In California, 5 hospitals made the honor roll and 64 hospitals were on the state’s best hospitals list.

“We use a number of different measures to assess hospital quality and we separately assess each hospital in many different specialties and services that hospitals offer,” Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News told Patch.

The hospital rankings for 2019-20 include the honor roll, top ranked hospitals in 12 specialty categories and the top ranked hospitals by state and metro region.

Across the 12 specialty rankings — which cover categories like cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, and nephrology — U.S. News & World added two new measures that are patient centered: patient outcome and patient experience.

“In each of those areas, we are now assessing how successful a hospital is at sending patients home,” Harder said. The rankings now look at whether after receiving care, patients end up going home or require further care at a rehab facility or even at a different hospital.

“That’s an important outcome for patients,” Harder said. “Patients do want to be home recovering and spending time with their families.”

However, the methodology adjusts for how sick a patient was when they were admitted to the hospital so that hospitals that admit sicker patients are not penalized in the rankings.

The second patient-centered measure added to the methodology is patient experience. Data from a federally mandated survey was used to assess this measure, according to U.S. News.

The survey covers topics like how good doctors and nurses were at communicating with patients and how well a patient understood how to take care of themselves after leaving the hospital.

“So that patient experience dimension is one that we added to our specialty rankings this year, and obviously that’s important for patients too because they not only want to get good care and have a good outcome but also feel that what mattered to them was considered and taken into account in the care they got,” Harder said.

Honor Roll Hospitals

U.S. News explains that the hospitals that make the honor roll deliver exceptional treatment across multiple areas of care.

“The honor roll is geared to identifying hospitals that are both exceptionally good at the service they offer and offer a wide breadth of service,” Harder said, explaining that by definition, that means hospitals that are highly ranked across many or most specialties.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota took the No.1 spot on the 2019-20 honor roll, followed by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Cleveland Clinic and New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell rounded out the top five on the honor roll.

The remaining hospitals on the honor roll are:

• UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles (6)
• UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco (7)
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles (8)
• NYU Langone Hospitals, New York, N.Y. (9)
• Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago (10)
• University of Michigan Hospitals-Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor (11)
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, Calif. (12)
• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston (13)
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York (14)
• UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside, Pittsburgh (15)
• Keck Hospital of USC, Los Angeles (16)
• University of Wisconsin Hospitals, Madison (17)
• Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia (tie) (18)
• Mayo Clinic-Phoenix (tie) (18)
• Houston Methodist Hospital (tie) (20)
• Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn. (tie) (20)

Regional Hospital Rankings

In California, the top-ranked hospitals are:

• UCLA Medical Center, no. 1

• UCSF Medical Center, no. 2

• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, no. 3

• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, no. 4

• Keck Hospital of USC, no. 5

• UC Davis Medical Center, no. 6

• Scripps La Jolla Hospitals, no. 7

• Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, tied for no. 8

• UC San Diego Health-Jacobs Medical Center, tied for no. 8

• UC Irvine Medical Center, tied for no. 10

• Huntington Memorial Hospital, tied for no. 10

• Torrance Memorial Medical Center, no. 12

• Mission Hospital, tied for no. 13

• John Muir Health-Walnut Creek Medical Center, tied for no. 13

• John Muir Health-Concord Medical Center, tied for no. 15

• MemorialCare Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, tied for no. 15

• Adventist Health-Glendale, no. 17

• California Pacific Medical Center, tied for no. 18

• Sutter Medical Center, tied for no. 18

• Providence Tarzana Medical Center, tied for no. 18

• Eisenhower Medical Center, no. 21

• Loma Linda University Medical Center, tied for no. 22

• MemorialCare Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, tied for no. 22

• St. Jude Medical Center, tied for no. 22

• El Camino Hospital, tied for no. 25

• Sharp Memorial Hospital, tied for no. 25

• PIH Health Hospital-Whittier, tied for no. 25

• Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, tied for no. 28

• St. Joseph Hospital, tied for no. 28

• Sequoia Hospital, tied for no. 28

• Sutter Roseville Medical Center, tied for no. 28

• Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, tied for no. 28

• Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, tied for no. 33

• Mercy General Hospital, tied for no. 33

• Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center, tied for no. 33

• Providence St. John's Health Center, tied for no. 33

• Kaiser Permanente Anaheim Medical Center, tied for no. 37

• Enloe Medical Center, tied for no. 37

• Mills-Peninsula Health Services-Burlingame, tied for no. 37

• Kaiser Permanente Fontana and Ontario Medical Centers, tied for no. 37

• Sharp Grossmont Hospital, tied for no. 37

• Oroville Hospital, tied for no. 37

• Kaiser Permanente Sacramento Medical Center, tied for no. 37

• Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, tied for no. 37

• Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, tied for no. 45

• Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, tied for no. 45

• Palomar Medical Center Escondido, tied for no. 45

• Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center, tied for no. 45

• Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center, tied for no. 45

• Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center, tied for no. 45

• Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center Torrance, tied for no. 45

• Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Mercy San Juan Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare, tied for no. 52

• Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Scripps Memorial Hospital-Encinitas tied for no. 52

• St. Agnes Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Desert Regional Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Scripps Mercy Hospital, tied for no. 52

• Adventist Health St. Helena, tied for no. 52

• Kaweah Delta Medical Center, tied for no. 52

• Washington Hospital, tied for no. 64

The 12 specialties that hospitals were ranked for are: cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, ear, nose and throat, gastroenterology and GI surgery, geriatrics, gynecology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and lung surgery, and urology.

Harder explains that hospitals that rank highly in specialty care are often regional or national referral centers, somewhere a patient may go to get a second opinion, even traveling across several states.

“Most patients can find the care they need in their community or near their community, in their insurance network,” he said.

The rankings for regional hospitals don’t require that these centers are strong in referral care because many patients don’t need that level of care. The local rankings are geared towards identifying hospitals that are good at a range of services.

“The vast majority of patients don’t need a top ranked hospital for complex specialty care and their needs may be very well met by a best regional hospital that can offer a breadth of services relevant to their care,” Harder said.

Methodology

U.S. News & World Report said the 2019-20 rankings evaluated nearly every community hospital in America. Only 165 hospitals out of over 4,500 were ranked in one specialty while 569 hospitals were ranked among the best regional hospitals. A hospital was ranked regionally based on its performance in delivering complex and common care, U.S. News says. The rankings are jointly produced by U.S. News and RTI International, a North Carolina-based research organization. (Read the full U.S. News best hospitals methodology.)