U.S. News & World Report’s annual “America’s Best Hospitals” survey is out again and, as usual, Houston’s Texas Medical Center is well-represented in the lists of the top hospitals in a number of different categories. Here is a previous post on the 2004 survey.
The U.S. News and World Report survey ranks the country’s top 50 hospitals in 17 specialties. Less than a third of the 6,000 U.S. hospitals meet the eligibility criteria and only 176 of those institutions qualified for a ranking. The rankings are based on a survey of board-certified physicians around the country, patient survival data and various other indicators, such as the ratio of nurses to patients, technologies and services available to patients, the number of discharges over a three-year period, and whether the institution has Magnet status as determined by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
M.D. Anderson was again ranked as one of the top two hospitals in cancer care, a position that it has held since U.S. News and World Report began its annual survey in 1990. M.D. Anderson held the No. 1 position in 1992, 2000, and 2002 through 2004. M.D. Anderson also ranked fifth in gynecology, and 11th in both otolaryngology (i.e., ear, nose and throat diseases) and in urology.
Other Medical Center institutions also ranked highly in various categories. Texas Children’s Hospital ranked fourth in pediatrics, while The Menninger Clinic ranked tenth in psychiatry and The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (known as “TIRR”) ranked fifth in rehabilitation. The Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Hospital ranked eighth in heart and heart surgery, while St. Luke‘s also ranked 40th in urology and 42nd in kidney disease. Memorial Hermann Hospital — the teaching hospital for the University of Texas Health Science Center — was ranked 41st in kidney disease and 49th in urology.
Finally, the The Methodist Hospital ranked in more specialties than any other Texas hospital — tenth in neurology and neurosurgery, 13th in urology, 14th in opthamology, 16th in heart and heart surgery, 17th otolaryngology, 19th in psychiatry and 42nd in gynecology.
As I have noted many times, not only is the Texas Medical Center one of Houston’s largest centers of employment, it is an amazing collection of medical services talent.