U.S. News & World Report releases annual rankings
By Sam Catanzaro
Santa Monica’s UCLA Medical Center is the top hospital in California and one of the top 5 in the nation, according to recently announced rankings.
On Tuesday, U.S. News & World Report published their annual rankings for hospitals in the United States with UCLA Health hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica placing No. 1 in both Los Angeles and California and No. 4 nationally in annual rankings. Last year UCLA ranked No. 6 in the nation.
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota earned the top spot in the rankings this year, followed by, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital and New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell.
This is the 31st consecutive year UCLA has appeared on the ranking’s national honor roll of the top-20 hospitals nationwide.
“Every day, I am inspired by the teamwork of our physicians, nurses, health care professionals and support staff whose knowledge, skill, dedication and compassion make possible the excellence in health care,” said Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Hospital System. “I am incredibly proud of the work that our team members do each and every day to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.”
U.S. News evaluated the performance of more than 4,500 medical centers in 16 specialties and 10 procedures and conditions. To earn a spot on the honor roll, hospitals must earn high scores across many of these areas of care.
“When people get sick, they need care. Even before COVID-19 struck, more than 33 million people in the U.S. required treatment in a hospital each year. Strokes, heart attacks and bone fractures haven’t ceased. And so-called ‘elective’ care can’t be delayed forever,” wrote Ben Harder, U.S. News Managing Editor and Chief of Health Analysis. “With more than 6,000 hospitals across the U.S., many patients face a choice about where they get treated. And which hospital they choose matters. Some medical centers have honed impressive expertise in complex specialty care, such as what’s involved in transplanting a heart. Others struggle with even relative basic procedures like knee replacement.”
UCLA Health earned top 10 rankings in 13 areas of care, including geriatrics (No. 3), nephrology (No. 3), diabetes and endocrinology (4), gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery (5), ophthalmology (5) and pulmonology and lung surgery (5).
“We pride ourselves on providing the best possible care to each patient, no matter the circumstances — from routine checkups in our community clinics to complex procedures in our hospitals,” said Dr. John Mazziotta, vice chancellor for UCLA Health Sciences and CEO of UCLA Health.
U.S. News’ methodologies in most areas of care are based largely on objective measures such as risk-adjusted survival, discharge-to-home rates, patient volume and the quality of nursing, among other care-related indicators.
In a separate assessment, Newsweek recently ranked Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center among the best hospitals in the world.
Two other Los Angeles hospitals made U.S. News‘s honor roll: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (No. 17) and Keck Hospital of USC (No. 18).
