How to Find the Best Hospital for Your Healthcare Needs

Trying to find the best hospital for the care you need can be confusing. From highway billboards to magazine ads and online search results, you may see a number of hospitals or health systems touting their status as a No. 1 hospital or in the top 10 either overall or for a medical specialty. What do these rankings mean, and how do you choose the best hospital for you?

"Each rating system measures performance in very different ways, using different metrics and methodologies, and there’s no gold standard," says Karl Bilimoria, MD, chair of the department of surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis and an expert in hospital quality improvement and implementation.

But that doesn’t mean that rankings and ratings aren’t useful. Using them, along with your doctor’s recommendations and some online research, can be a good strategy for finding the best hospital for your healthcare needs, he says.

There are many ways to rate and rank hospitals, and different organizations may crunch the numbers in a way that emphasizes one aspect of healthcare over another.

Here are the areas that are often included when evaluating hospitals:

• Patient Survey Data In these surveys, patients rate their hospital experience based on factors like ease and quality of communication with nurses and doctors, responsiveness of hospital staff, discussion of medications, facility cleanliness, and overall satisfaction.

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• Clinical Outcome Measures This includes metrics like mortality rates for specific conditions, complication rates, and patient safety.

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• Timely and Effective Care Hospitals are evaluated based on how well they follow recommended medical guidelines and provide timely treatments for specific conditions, such as a heart attack or pneumonia.

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• Readmission Rates One way to assess the quality of the care that a hospital provides is by tracking how often patients need to return to the hospital, typically within 30 days of discharge.

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If you’re looking to find the best hospital near you or further away for a particular purpose, you may want to check out the ratings and reviews from the following organizations:

• Medicare’s Care Compare
• U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals
• Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals
• Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grade
• Healthgrades

Medicare’s Care Compare

U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals

The system leans heavily on patient outcomes, adequate staffing, clinically proven tools, expert opinions (what other physicians think about the hospital), and metrics about safety and readmissions.

U.S. News & World Report rankings offer especially good information for specialties in complex care, and “they also have increased reporting on common procedures and diagnoses,” Dr. Bilimoria says.

Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals

Castle Connolly’s Top Hospitals recognizes excellence in essential medical procedures, offering patients a trusted resource for navigating critical healthcare decisions.

Using comprehensive data from commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid insurance claims, Castle Connolly evaluates hospitals and provides insights from a wide range of patients for a more complete picture of hospital performance across diverse populations.

The hospitals are evaluated on procedure volume, patient outcomes, quality of care, and physician expertise, including the number of Castle Connolly Top Doctors and hospital nominations received. Its methodology also includes performance metrics that track in-hospital safety events and evaluate a hospital’s ability to prevent adverse events after complications.

More than 6,400 hospitals are evaluated, and more than 1,400 hospitals across all 50 states are recognized for excellence in 20 medical procedures. Castle Connolly is a division of Everyday Health Group.

Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade

Process and structure measures include whether there are tools to prevent medication errors, appropriate staffing, and strong leadership. Outcome measures represent what happens to a patient while receiving care, including medical accidents and injuries.

Healthgrades

The company creates predictive models that account for variations in patient populations and their complexity by using risk-adjusted data. Analysts compare their predictive outcome to actual outcomes at a facility, and star ratings are awarded based on whether the facility has outcomes that are statistically higher or lower than expectations.

Generally speaking, even if a hospital rates high overall, you still should try to find information about the specific area for which you need care, says Bilimoria. Here are some of his tips on how to do this research.

Avoid Focusing Too Much on One Metric

Even though many of the stats are useful, they aren’t perfect, and sometimes they may even be misleading. “Say that in your research you see that a particular institution has a high infection rate, and that gives you pause about going there. But there can be more to the story,” says Bilimoria. An infection rate may be high because the hospital is very meticulous in identifying all cases, while a hospital that looks to have a near-perfect record may not be catching a lot of cases, he says.

Consider Volume

“Volume means how much of whatever type of care a doctor or hospital is performing. Typically, more volume — doing X thing more often — means that they do it better. It can be an excellent surrogate for quality,” Bilimoria says. For instance, a hospital that does thousands of a certain type of complex heart surgery every year likely has better results than a hospital that does very few of these surgeries.

Check State Reporting for Smaller, Rural Health Sites

Ask a Primary Care Doctor

A primary care doctor can recommend a hospital on the basis of your medical history and individual situation. “Ask about who they recommend in the area for the specific type of care you will be seeking. If it’s for surgical care, the primary care physicians will know who typically has good results and where their patients have had good satisfaction with their care” Bilimoria says.

He also suggests asking a primary doctor for multiple recommendations, whether it’s for hospitals or hospital-based specialists. “You may find that you have a good rapport with one [specialist] but not with another,” he says.

This may also be helpful if you’re looking for a second or third opinion. “If you need surgery or care for a complex condition, you definitely want to get at least two opinions about what should be done,” Bilimoria says.

Once you have a few names, you can look up those physicians and their hospitals in the rankings, Bilimoria says.

• Each hospital ranking system uses different metrics to measure performance, such as patient survey data, clinical care outcomes, and readmission and complication rates.
• Use hospital rankings and ratings along with a recommendation from a primary care professional and your own research to find the best hospital for your healthcare needs.
• When asking a primary care physician for hospital and specialist recommendations, be sure to ask for multiple names.