What makes a hospital a "best"? A smart, caring workforce armed with the latest technology? Of course. But if that were the magic formula, the only names you'd see in the "America's Best Hospitals" rankings would be those of high-profile, big-money centers that can afford to lure top talent and purchase every new device. Hospitals that fly below the radar, like the 17 facilities in the heart rankings that were cited by fewer than 1 percent of heart specialists who responded to the annual U.S. News survey, would never appear.
A great hospital is different because of an internal culture of excellence. Set at the top and embraced by caregivers, medical standards are high and emphasize not only doing well but striving to do better—to hammer down the number of infections, to boost survival of high-risk surgery patients, to systematically squeeze out errors rather than painting a scarlet "E" on those who make them. If such goals cannot be achieved by using conventional means, goes the thinking at such places, invent new ones.
They are places like Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Mayo Clinic, and the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, which top this year's Honor Roll—the 19 institutions that achieved high scores in at least six specialties. (The entire list appears below.) All told, U.S. News analyzed data on 5,453 medical centers to produce 170 standouts in 16 specialties, from cancer and heart care to geriatrics and urology.
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