Hospital quality is one of the most important factors when choosing a doctor for inpatient care. Healthgrades has been helping people evaluate and compare hospital performance to make more informed choices since 1998.
When searching for high quality specialty care, patients can look beyond overall performance ratings to find a hospital that excels in their specific condition or procedure.
Hospital quality is not one-size-fits-all: the same hospital with outstanding outcomes in bariatric surgery might have a cardiac care program with higher-than-average mortality rates. That's why outcomes-focused tools like Healthgrades quality awards and ratings are critical to helping people make informed choices about where to seek care.
We don’t consider the reputation
of the institution or any financial information. Our scientific and transparent methodology focuses
on what matters most to patients:
clinical outcomes.
Hospital quality is not a popularity contest
Healthgrades has been rating hospitals for over 20 years.
potentially could have been saved.
Why are hospital quality ratings
so important?
Patients having Total Knee Replacement
at a five-star hospital have an 80% lower risk of experiencing
a complication while in the hospital than
if treated in hospitals with one star.
230,466 lives
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8. Receiving an Award
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7. Giving Stars
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6. Calculating Scores
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5. Predicting Hospital Outcomes
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4. Analyzing the Data
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3. Considering Risk Factors
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2. Measuring Outcomes
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1. Identifying Patient Groups
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Based on the scores we’ve calculated,
the top 10% of hospitals in each
specialty area receive the Specialty Excellence Award. From this list, we identify the top 100 hospitals for 11 specialty areas and the top 50 hospitals for three specialty areas. These
hospitals are recognized as America's 50/100 Best Hospitals for Specialty
CareTM in their respective fields.
8. Receiving an Award
We assign star ratings to hospitals based on how well they perform in
each medical procedure or condition.
Five stars mean they performed
better than expected, three stars
mean they performed as expected,
and one star means they performed worse than expected.
7. Giving Stars
We compare each hospital's actual outcomes with its predicted outcomes
to see how well it performed. In other words, is a given hospital performing
as we’d expect it to?
6. Calculating Scores
With this information, we create
a model that predicts the expected outcome for each hospital based on
its patients' conditions and risk factors.
5. Predicting Hospital Outcome
Our team of data scientists analyzes
the data and identifies which risk factors are most important in predicting patient outcomes. This step helps find important patterns.
4. Analyzing the Data
To get a complete view, we consider different risk factors that could affect the treatment's success. These factors include existing health conditions, age, gender, the type of procedure performed, and admission source.
3. Considering Risk Factors
Next, we look at how well hospitals perform when treating 31 different conditions and procedures groups.
We focus on two key aspects: mortality (how many patients die as a result
of their condition or procedure) and complications (how many experience additional health issues).
2. Measuring Outcomes
We start by looking at different groups of patients based on their specific medical conditions or procedures.
1. Identifying Patient Groups
At Healthgrades, we determine America's
Best Hospitals for Specialty Care using a careful scientific process. If you want to read
all the details of why our methodology is the most rigorous and impartial, you can read the full methodology. Otherwise, keep reading for an overview of how we identify the award-recipient hospitals.
Here’s how we evaluate hospitals for this award
Healthgrades rates hospitals across 31 conditions and procedures.
We get our data from approximately 4,500 hospitals nationwide. Hospitals cannot opt
in or opt out, nor can they submit their
own data.
Our analysis is
based on 45+ million Medicare medical claims for the most recent three-year period available.
To get a quick overview of how we rate hospitals, let’s start by looking at the numbers:
By the numbers
What goes into achieving
a Healthgrades Specialty
Excellence AwardTM ?
TM
and Why It Matters
According to the Healthgrades 2026 Specialty Excellence Ratings Analysis, if all hospitals,
as a group, performed similarly to five-star rated hospitals:
Hospital quality can vary from hospital to hospital, and those differences can literally mean the difference between life and death. On average, patients treated at a hospital receiving a five-star rating have a lower risk
of complication or mortality than if they
were treated at a hospital receiving a one-
star rating in that procedure or condition.
For example:
Patients treated for Heart Attack at a
five-star hospital
have a 51% lower
risk of dying in the hospital than if treated in hospitals with one star.
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Using data from 2022 through 2024
How Healthgrades
Rates Hospitals
Statistical average based on Healthgrades analysis of 2022-2024 MedPAR data and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only.
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and Why It Matters
How Healthgrades
Rates Hospitals