Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins ranked top 3 in GI

Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins Hospital were again ranked the top three hospitals in gastroenterology and GI surgery by U.S. News & World Report.

All three hospitals also ranked top three in the 2017-2018 Best Hospitals Honor Roll, which U.S. News awards to 20 hospitals for delivering overall exceptional care. This is Mayo Clinic’s second consecutive year at the top of the Honor Roll, and it has won the top spot in GI for nearly two decades.

“It is a humbling honor to once again be named as the top GI division in the country by the U.S. News and World Report,” Vijay Shah, MD, professor and chair of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Mayo Clinic, told Healio Gastroenterology. “This is a testament to the tremendously hard work of our physician and allied health team to always ‘put the needs of the patient first’ and to buttress this compelling vision by delivering outstanding patient care, cutting edge research and impactful education for all our learners.”

Among the top 50 hospitals in gastroenterology and GI surgery, the top 10 included:

Mayo Clinic

Cleveland Clinic

Johns Hopkins Hospital

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Massachusetts General Hospital

UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside

Mayo Clinic Jacksonville

Mount Sinai Hospital

University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers

Mayo Clinic Phoenix

“The gastroenterologists and gastrointestinal surgeons at the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute at Cleveland Clinic are incredibly proud and honored to have been awarded the position of being in the top 2 institutions for GI and GI surgery again this year,” Conor P. Delaney, MD, PhD, chairman of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute at Cleveland Clinic, told Healio Gastroenterology. “We are lucky to have an incredibly talented team of medical and surgical doctors, nurses and support staff. We bring a unified team approach to our mission of looking after patients first, performing the highest level research into improving outcomes for our patients, and educating specialists who practice in this field. We are delighted to have the opportunity to be able to look after patients from our own region, as well as complex cases referred from around the nation and the world.”

In the rankings’ 28th year, more than 4,500 medical centers were compared across 16 specialties and nine procedures and conditions, and a total of 152 hospitals were ranked in at least one specialty.

While the methodologies are primarily based on objective measures like risk-adjusted survival and readmission rates, volume, patient experience, safety and quality of nursing, this year’s methodologies expanded the Medicare data used to measure procedures and conditions ratings from 3 years to 5 years; avoided penalties for hospitals treating low-income patients and high-risk transfer patients; and improved measurements for volume and patient safety, according to a press release.

“Covering nearly every hospital in every U.S. community, U.S. News offers deep, rich data that patients can use to help them make informed decisions about where to receive surgical or medical care,” Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News, said in the press release. “We know outcomes matter most, which is why U.S. News is committed to publishing as much data as possible on patient outcomes.” – by Adam Leitenberger