Lafayette Hospital Ranked Among America's Best

LAFAYETTE, CO -- Lafayette's Good Samaritan Medical Center was one of two Colorado hospitals ranked among the top 50 nationwide, according to a new list released by Healthgrades. Published on Tuesday, the list identifies the top 250, the top 100 and the top 50 hospitals in the United States.

Colorado's other top 50 winner was Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge.

Healthgrades said that its analysis revealed that on average, the hospitals on its list outperformed others in treating a core group of conditions that account for more than 80 percent of deaths in the areas evaluated for the rankings.

The hospitals that place in the top 50 in the country are in the top 1 percent of hospitals in the nation “for providing overall clinical excellence across a broad spectrum of conditions and procedures consistently for six or more consecutive years,” according to Healthgrades. The hospitals in the top 100 are in the top 2 percent of hospitals in the country “for exhibiting clinical excellence for five or more consecutive years,” Healthgrades says. The top 250 hospitals are in the top 5 percent for overall clinic excellence for the current year.

In addition to its top-ranked duo, Colorado had three hospitals ranked among the top 100 — Denver's Porter Adventist, Fort Collins' Poudre Valley, and Aurora's University of Colorado Hospital at Anschutz Medical Campus — and two more among the top 250 — Greeley's North Colorado Medical Center and Lone Tree's Sky Ridge Medical Center.

Healthgrades’ complete list of the top 250 hospitals are organized by state and are also not ranked in any order.

Healthgrades evaluates hospital performance for 32 procedures and conditions and in order to be eligible for the list, a hospital must have evaluations in at least 21 of the procedures and conditions. After identifying eligible hospitals, Healthgrades has a series of steps it uses to compile the list of the top 250 hospitals. The procedures and conditions evaluated by Healthgrades include heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis and stroke. (You can read the full methodology here.)

You can see the full list of hospitals from Healthgrades here.

Patch national editor Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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