Best Hospitals 2015-16: an Overview

Nearly 100,000 Americans are hospitalized each day. That adds up to nearly 40 million hospitalizations per year. With so many lives at stake and so many opportunities to hone their care, hospitals could be expected to meet demanding quality standards. After all, manufacturing, commercial aviation and other major industries have achieved high degrees of consistency and safety.

But health care is different. Some hospitals excel in treating exceedingly difficult cases, while others too often fail even patients whose medical needs are relatively straightforward. As a result, health care consumers need to take care when they choose a hospital. To help patients make smart, well-informed choices, U.S. News has published annual hospital rankings for more than two and a half decades. These rankings and the quality data from which they're derived highlight hospitals that perform best in specific areas of care.

The focus of the Best Hospitals rankings has long been on meeting the needs of the most challenging and medically complex patients. These patients represent cases where the stakes are greatest – often a matter of life or death – and where, for some patients, it makes sense to venture beyond a trusted community hospital to seek care at a truly exceptional medical center. With these patients in mind, U.S. News today published its 2015-16 national rankings, which cover complex care in 16 medical and surgical specialties.

Top-ranked hospitals include University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (No. 1 in the nation in Cancer), the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio (No. 1 nationally in Cardiology & Heart Surgery) and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, New York (No. 1 in Orthopedics). They also include 15 hospitals that ranked among the top 20 nationally in at least half a dozen different specialties, earning them each a berth on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll. Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston topped that list.