For patients in the D.C. region, the best medical center is once again Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, according to the 2022 “Best Hospitals” rankings from U.S. News & World Report.
It’s the fourth year in a row that the center has topped the regional ranking.
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“It performed very well across many of the surgeries, procedures and specialties that we evaluate,” Ben Harder, the Chief of Health Analysis at U.S. News & World Report, said of Inova Fairfax Hospital.
MedStar Washington Hospital Center came in second in the region, followed by MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, in third. U.S. News & World Report said the D.C. metropolitan area included Alexandria and Arlington County, Virginia, and Bethesda and Rockville, Maryland.
Researchers surveyed patient data at more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide to create the rankings. U.S. News & World Report puts out the rankings to help patients decide where to receive care, Harder said.
A slew of factors were considered by researchers when ranking the medical centers, including survival rates, patient experiences and level of nursing care. But this year, the publication added a new category called “home time.” It measured how successfully each hospital helped patients get back home.
“Being able to be at home with their loved ones, instead of in a hospital or an emergency room, that’s a really important aspect of their outcome,” Harder said.
The list also focuses on specialty care, like cancer, cardiology and neurology. Researchers looked at data in adult specialties and ranked hospitals on successful treatments offered to patients. For instance, cancer hospitals were rated on high performing oncology surgeries.
Also included in this year’s ranking, the publication added three new ratings: ovarian, prostate and uterine cancer surgeries. Harder said some readers have asked for the addition.
“We know that patients need different types of care,” he said. “For patients with prostate cancer, one of the more common forms of cancer, we wanted to provide them with meaningful, data-driven information.”
For patients who need to travel for top care, the publication also has its honor roll list. Researchers deemed a small group of 20 medical centers as the best in the nation.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, topped this year’s list. It did last year, too.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles came in second and NYU Langone Hospitals in New York finished third. The closest honor roll list receipt to the D.C. region is Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who finished tied for fifth.
See the entire rankings at U.S. News & World Report’s website.
