U.S. News releases 2010 Best Hospitals rankings

U.S. News & World Report has released its 2010 rankings of the best hospitals. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore topped this year's honor roll. "The special quality shared by the 152 that made it into the new 2010-11 Best Hospitals rankings (out of nearly 5,000 that were considered) is their ability to take on and meet the most difficult challenges" (Comarow, 7/14). The magazine also has a story on how to tell when a hospital is bad for you, even if it's good for others (Comarow and Johnson, 7/14). In a separate story, U.S. News & World Report also explains what hospital certifications say — and don't say — and how professional groups are certifying programs that meet standards. "How to choose among the ones near you? Research shows that most people ask friends and relatives, especially those in the medical profession, says Eric Schneider, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a senior scientist at the Rand Corp. But growing consumer demand for measures that are more objective has professional groups scrambling to provide official certifications for hospital programs that meet standards for treating specific diseases" (Davids Landau, 7/14).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.