A Look Inside the Hospital Rankings

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The reason why "Medicare only" is simple. That is the only readily available database. Health stats for commercial payers are in the hands of the individual hospitals and the individual commerical payers. Medicaid patients' data is in the hands of each state. Because Medicare is "all states," and is available in "one location," and because the data collected must be in the same format from every single facility, it is the easy one use.
There is also a central (non-governmental) repository for Children's hospitals, but I believe that is voluntary.
I agree that basing 1/3 of the total score on Reputation is of dubious merit. For a metrics-centered organization like RTI, I wonder how they justify that?

Doug of NY 8:39AM July 11, 2008

I wonder how the hospitals score on satisfaction of the people they serve.

of 8:13AM July 11, 2008

Why only look at Medicare admissions? Why not look at all admissions which would include a broader population and perhaps more complicated disease states.
Also, I take issue with using reputation as a benchmark. Many "reputations" are falsely inflated or are the result of professional or academic alignments.
It would be more interesting/valuable to look at patient responses and reports of care received at these institutions as well as broaden the scope of the hard data collected to include all patient admissions.

L. C. Emerson of MA 7:49AM July 11, 2008

I could not find the top 10 heart Hospitals. Please email this list. Thank you.

Dan Simmons of MD 7:34AM July 11, 2008

The specialists polled all have links to the hospitals- local, regional or by training-thus making the rankings preferences not true measures of quality. Each hospital may have a strong point within each specialty, but your local hospital/ physician should guide your care.

ron young of NC 7:14AM July 11, 2008

How is it possible to rank these hospitals without a score for emergency medicine? I would think that a large percentage of the clients for these hospitals would arise from emergency visitis.

Mike of NY 6:32AM July 11, 2008