U.S. News and World Report added its latest hospital rankings to the fray this week, releasing a list of the Top 15 hospitals that it dubbed its "Honor Roll." But with all the talk about inconsistency in ratings programs across companies and federal agencies that also give grades, scores or stars to facilities, we thought we'd take a look at how the Honor Roll scored across other programs.
Of course, the inconsistency is easily explained: Each rankings program uses a different methodology. U.S. News, perhaps the most consumer focused of the lists, uses patient experience metrics and other stats like nursing levels, survival rates and patient volume.
[Also: U.S. News ranks nation's best hospitals.]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services uses answers to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys, a purely patient-experience metric, to assign its star rankings.
Healthgrades runs two lists, one based on HCAHPS scores and another based on clinical outcomes and then combines them to come up with its Top 100. Truven also runs a Top 100, but adds financial performance stats to its measure of clinical results.
Leapfrog bases its rankings on patient safety.
While in comparison, no hospital on the U.S. News Honor Roll flat-out failed in other rankings, in many cases they received only average scores or didn't show up at all.
Here's the comparison. (HG = Healthgrades)
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| 'Honor Roll' | CMS stars | Leapfrog | Truven 100 | HG 100 | HG Patient Exp. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'Honor Roll' | CMS stars | Leapfrog | Truven 100 | HG 100 | HG Patient Exp. |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | 5 | B | No | No | Yes |
| Mayo Clinic | 5 | A | No | Yes | Yes |
| Johns Hopkins Hospital | 5 | n/a | No | No | Yes |
| UCLA Medical Center | 5 | C | No | No | No |
| Cleveland Clinic | 5 | A | No | No | Yes |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital | 4 | A | No | No | Yes |
| New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell | 3 | B | No | Yes | No |
| UCSF Medical Center | 4 | A | No | No | No |
| Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian | 3 | B | No | Yes | No |
| Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University | 4 | C | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Northwestern Memorial Hospital | 4 | B | No | No | No |
| NYU Langone Medical Center | 4 | B | No | No | No |
| UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center | 4 | B | No | No | No |
| Duke University Hospital | 5 | A | Yes | No | No |
| Stanford Health-Stanford Hospital | 5 | A | Yes | No | Yes |
Twitter: @HenryPowderly