America's Best Hospitals: the 2021-22 Honor Roll and Overview
For more than 30 years, the mission of U.S. News & World Report's annual Best Hospitals rankings has been to help guide patients, in consultation with their doctors, to the right hospital when they need care. The devastating coronavirus pandemic underscored the importance of high-quality health care. While disrupting life in many ways, it only reinforced U.S. News' long-standing commitment to help patients across the nation find the best hospital for their needs.
To help readers narrow their search, U.S. News rates hospitals in 17 bellwether procedures and conditions such as knee replacement and heart bypass surgery. Seven of the ratings, new this year, cover:
-- Back surgery (spinal fusion).
-- Diabetes.
-- Hip fracture.
-- Pneumonia.
-- Stroke.
U.S. News also ranks hospitals in 15 areas of complex specialty care. These ratings and rankings are based on each hospital's patient outcomes -- that is, how well patients have fared after treatment -- as well as other factors that matter to patients, like the quality of their experience and whether the hospital is adequately staffed.
[Read: FAQ: How and Why We Rank and Rate Hospitals.]
U.S. News also ranks hospitals in each state and nearly 100 metro areas, to make it easy for everyone to find excellent care close to home and in their insurance network. To be counted among this year's 531 Best Regional Hospitals, a hospital generally had to outperform in at least six of the procedures and conditions U.S. News evaluates.
While urban areas around New York City, Los Angeles and greater Chicago have the greatest concentrations of top medical centers, Best Regional Hospitals can also be found in the Florida Panhandle, Kentucky's Bluegrass Region, the Ozarks of Arkansas and scores of other urban and rural areas.
The Best Hospitals Honor Roll highlights 20 hospitals that excel across most or all types of care evaluated by U.S. News. Hospitals received points if they were nationally ranked in the 15 specialties -- the more specialties and the higher their rank, the more points they got -- and if they were rated high performing in any of the 17 procedures and conditions. The top point-scorers made the Honor Roll.
U.S. News 2021-22 Best Hospitals Honor Roll
-- 1. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
-- 2. Cleveland Clinic.
-- 3. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles.
-- 4. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.
-- 5. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
-- 6. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
-- 7. New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, New York.
-- 8. NYU Langone Hospitals, New York.
-- 9. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco.
-- 10. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago.
-- 11. University of Michigan Hospitals-Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor.
-- 12. Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California.
-- 13. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia.
-- 14. Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.
-- 15. Mayo Clinic-Phoenix.
-- 16. Houston Methodist Hospital.
-- 17. (tie) Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis.
-- 17. (tie) Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.
-- 19. Rush University Medical Center, Chicago.
-- 20. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville.
For most illnesses, patients do not need to go to an Honor Roll hospital, which may require traveling away from home and paying expenses for out-of-network care. All rankings and ratings should be seen as just a starting point for patients who are considering, with input from their doctors, where to seek care. Individual diagnosis, insurance coverage and personal priorities are important factors in making a personal best choice.
Ben Harder oversees methodology and data analysis for U.S. News & World Report's portfolio of data-driven patient decision-support tools, including the Best Hospitals and Best Children's Hospitals rankings, Best Nursing Homes ratings, and searchable Find a Doctor directory. A frequent speaker on topics related to quality measurement and public reporting, Harder is a healthcare journalist whose work has appeared in BMJ, JAMA, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic News, Science News, USA Today, the Washington Post and other publications. A Science News cover story he wrote about the use of maggots in medicine was anthologized in Best American Science Writing 2005. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he served as the first Editor in Chief of Let's Go Publications, a publisher of travel guides. He completed a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation journalism fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 and has been an editor at U.S. News since 2007. He tweets @benharder.
