Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, is once again near the top of the rankings of the nation’s best hospitals, and Inova Fairfax Hospital is ranked the No. 1 hospital in the D.C. area in the annual rankings by U.S. News and World Report.
“Our results are intended to be a source of information, a data driven decision guide to patients for them to weigh along with other factors including recommendations from their physician,” said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News and World Report.
“They should be making this decision in consultation with their physician for sure … but also where their insurance will cover care, what’s convenient to them and to their family and so on.”
He added it’s “just one factor in how a patient might make a decision about where to get care.”
The rankings evaluate hospitals in 35 medical and surgical services across the country. There are also refinements in this year’s evaluations raising the value of patient outcomes.
“How often do the patients treated for life-threatening diseases at a particular hospital survive their care? How often are they able to get home instead of perhaps being sent to a nursing home afterward and so on?” said Harder. “So those patient outcomes are very important to patients, they’re very important to doctors. And we’re putting more emphasis on those measures in our ranking methodology this year.”
Also included in the evaluations for this year’s rankings are how well hospitals perform in outpatient services, an increasingly larger component of today’s hospitals services. The value of the subjective opinions my medical professionals including physicians have been given less weight in this year’s rankings than last year’s.
“Johns Hopkins does very well in many of the specialty rankings. But there are also some very strong hospitals in the region that may not have that sort of national recognition that Johns Hopkins does. These would include Inova Fairfax Hospital, MedStar, Washington Hospital Center, University of Maryland Medical Center,” said Harder.
Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, is ranked the No. 1 hospital in Virginia and the No. 1 hospital in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Inova is ranked No. 18 in the nation for obstetrics and gynecology, and is rated high performing in pulmonary and lung surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, and gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery.
MedStar Washington Hospital Center the No. 2 ranked hospital in the D.C. area is ranked No. 33 in the nation for cardiology, heart and vascular surgery, and high performing in gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery.
Other top ranking hospitals in the D.C. area include:
- No. 3 MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
- No. 4 Virginia Hospital Center
- No. 5 George Washington University Hospital
- No. 6 Mary Washington Hospital
- No. 7 Johns Hopkins Medicine-Sibley Memorial Hospital
- No. 8 Inova Alexandria Hospital
- No. 9 Inova Fair Oaks Hospital
- No. 10 Johns Hopkins Medicine-Suburban Hospital
“D.C. and Baltimore-region residents are fortunate to have quite a few hospitals that provide very high quality care for many of the types of services that patients frequently need in hospitals,” said Harder. “And as a result, they have the luxury of making a decision about where to get care based on a number of factors including the rankings and ratings that we published.”
