Since 1998, Healthgrades has been helping consumers evaluate and compare hospital performance for care provided during a hospital stay for specific conditions or procedures.
Our hospital quality ratings and awards give consumers the transparency to make informed choices about where to seek care.
But what goes into achieving an America’s 250 Best Hospital Award™?
If you’re a scientific type and want to read all the details of why our methodology is the most rigorous (and impartial), you can read the full methodology. Otherwise, keep reading for an overview of how the process works.
By The Numbers
To get a quick overview of how we rate hospitals, let’s start by looking at the numbers:
- Our analysis is based on 45+ million Medicare medical claims at approximately 4,500 hospitals nationwide for the most recent three-year period available.
- Hospitals cannot opt in or opt out, nor can they submit their own data.
- Healthgrades has comprehensive healthcare expertise and rates hospitals across 31 condition and procedure groups — that’s a lot of specialties!
Hospital quality is not a popularity contest
We don’t consider an institution’s reputation or any financial information. Our scientific and transparent methodology focuses on what matters most to patients: clinical outcomes.
Methodology Simplified
Our methodology* works like this:
- Create groups of like patients using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes. This is the system healthcare providers use to classify and code all procedures, symptoms, and diagnoses — everything from headaches to hypertension. Some groups, like carotid procedures, are based on multiple conditions or procedures (angioplasty and endarterectomy), while others, like cranial neurosurgery, are based on a single condition or procedure (cranial neurosurgery).
- Identify the mortality and complications outcomes for 31 different condition or procedure groups.
- Develop a list of potential risk factors. These include comorbid conditions (existing conditions like heart disease), demographics (e.g., age and gender), procedural risk factors (e.g., single vs. bilateral knee replacement), and admission sources (e.g., patient transfers).
- Use a Logistic Regression (Wald Backward Stepwise, if you’re keeping score) to identify statistically significant risk factors for predicting outcomes.
- Apply the logistic regression model to the dataset to derive predicted outcomes for each hospital.
- Compare each facility’s actual outcome to its predicted outcome to calculate a z-score.
- Combine the outcome z-scores of at least 19 of the 31 condition or procedure groups a facility is rated on to create a weighted average score.
- Order the overall combined scores for each hospital from highest to lowest to identify the top 250.
Why Hospital Quality Matters
When it comes to choosing healthcare, quality saves lives, which is why Healthgrades is committed to delivering the most scientifically accurate and comprehensive information about doctors and hospitals — with data insights not available anywhere else. By offering easy access to data-driven hospital ratings, Healthgrades connects consumers with the right doctors and hospitals for their care needs.
This year’s award recipients deliver consistently superior clinical outcomes across a wide range of procedures and conditions, maximizing their patients’ chances of a positive care experience. In fact, if all hospitals performed similarly to America’s 250 Best, on average, 211,370 lives could have been saved.* Hospital quality definitely makes a difference!
For more information about how Healthgrades rates hospitals, contact us at quality@healthgrades.com or view our full methodology.
