Cleveland Clinic named top cardiology hospital by U.S. News & World Report

The Cleveland Clinic has ranked No. 1 among cardiology and heart surgery hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals rankings for the 20^th consecutive year.

The top-ranked hospitals in the 2014-2015 report for the field of cardiology and heart surgery are as follows:

Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, New York
Duke University Hospital, Durham, N.C.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn, N.Y.
Mount Sinai Hospital, New York

“Despite these recognitions, which we are certainly very grateful for, we also realize that we have to continue to be better; we have to continue to improve,” Bruce Lytle, MD, chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute, told Cardiology Today.

Bruce Lytle

“One of the things that we’re always concerned about is the feeling of well-being among our patients,” Lytle said. “We have spent a lot of time on the experience of our patients — not just with their diseases and their needs for treatment, but also their interactions with the medical system. I don’t pretend that we have solved those problems for people, but we certainly have spent a lot of time trying to make them better.”

The Cleveland Clinic was also ranked No. 4 in the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals Honor Roll, which included a total of 17 hospitals that ranked at or near the top in at least six evaluated specialties, according to a press release. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., ranked at the top of the honor roll for the first time this year. Each of the top five hospitals in cardiology and heart surgery were also included in the honor roll.

U.S. News & World Report published its first report on hospitals in 1990. Since that time, the report has grown to include 15 specialties in addition to cardiology and heart surgery: cancer; neurology and neurosurgery; ophthalmology; diabetes and endocrinology; orthopedics; ear, nose and throat; pulmonology; gastroenterology and GI surgery; psychiatry; geriatrics; rehabilitation; gynecology; rheumatology; nephrology; and urology.

The list has changed over the years. HIV/AIDS was removed from the list in 1998 once its treatment had moved primarily to outpatient settings. In 2007, pediatrics was separated from the list and a separate report on pediatric hospitals was developed.

The data for the report are mostly derived from information provided by the American Hospital Association using a metric U.S. News & World Report called an “index of hospital quality,” based on structure, process, outcomes and patient safety. Structural measures include the amount and types of technology provided, the availability of nursing staff, and other patient services. The process of care measures the ways care is delivered, from diagnosis to treatment, prevention and patient education. Outcomes are based on risk-adjusted overall survival. Because mortality is a key factor in the complex weighting system employed by U.S. News & World Report, ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation and rheumatology are judged using a reputation metric.

To be eligible for inclusion in the report, a hospital must be a member in the council of teaching hospitals, be affiliated with a medical school, or have at least 200 beds and associated staff or at least 100 beds and at least four “key technologies” such as advanced imaging devices, a cardiac ICU and robotic surgery. Other criteria include statistics related to volume and discharge.

A dashboard is available for hospitals to communicate directly with U.S. News & World Report and provide information, download report methodology and read related articles.

(Data reprinted with permission from U.S. News & World Report.)