Virginia Hospital Center Ranked 8th Among VA's Best Hospitals

Michael O'Connell
·5 min read

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. News & World Report has released its latest rankings of the best hospitals in the United States. The rankings come from data that was derived before the coronavirus pandemic, so the impact on hospitals nationwide is not reflected in the latest rankings.

Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington ranked as the eighth best hospital in Virginia. It also ranked high in patient experience and was high performing in seven adult procedures and conditions.

"The pandemic has altered, perhaps permanently, how patients get care and from whom they get it. Amid the disruption, we are steadfastly committed to providing the public with authoritative data for comparing hospital quality," said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News. "No hospital's clinical team came through this unprecedented health crisis unscathed."

The hospital rankings for 2020-21 include the best hospitals by specialty, region and overall.

Hospitals were ranked across 16 specialties: cancer; cardiology and heart surgery; diabetes and endocrinology; ear, nose and throat; gastroenterology and GI surgery; geriatrics; gynecology; nephrology; neurology and neurosurgery; ophthalmology; orthopedics; psychiatry; pulmonology and lung surgery; rehabilitation; rheumatology; and urology.

Of those, 12 are dictated mostly by data, while ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation and rheumatology are determined entirely by expert opinion, according to U.S. News.

Virginia Hospital Rankings

These are the top-ranked hospitals in Virginia by U.S. News for 2020–2021, including four that are nationally ranked for specialties:

Honor Roll Hospitals

For the fifth year, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was ranked the best hospital in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio was second, followed by Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
They were named to the Honor Roll for delivering exceptional treatment across multiple areas of care, according to U.S. News.

"The Honor Roll is geared to identifying hospitals that are both exceptionally good at the service they offer and offer a wide breadth of service," Harder told Patch last year. By definition, he said, hospitals on the list are highly ranked across many or most specialties.

Here are the hospitals on the Honor Roll for 2020–2021:

This year, the U.S. News rankings are accompanied by their "Hospital Heroes" project, a series of profiles highlighting more than 60 health care heroes from across the country.

The maternity unit at Sentara Princess Anne Hospital in Virginia Beach; chair of orthopedic surgery at VCU Health in Richmond; critical care chief at Children's Hospital in D.C.; and speech language pathologists at MedStar Georgetown Hospital in D.C. were among those recognized.

"Our Hospital Heroes series is a tribute to recognizing individuals at urban and rural hospitals in communities across the country who have gone above and beyond during this unparalleled time in history," Harder said.

Methodology

U.S. News & World Report said the 2020-21 rankings evaluated nearly every community hospital in America.

Only 134 hospitals out of over 4,500 were ranked in one specialty, while 563 hospitals were ranked among the best regional hospitals. A hospital was ranked regionally based on its performance in delivering complex and common care, U.S. News said. The rankings are jointly produced by U.S. News and RTI International, a North Carolina-based research organization.

Read the full U.S. News best hospitals methodology.

— By Patch editors Tim Moran and Elizabeth Janney

This article originally appeared on the Arlington Patch