Are the best hospitals run by medical doctors or business managers? The conventional wisdom is that doctors should focus on patient care, and managers with a business or administrative background are better suited to running the day-to-day operations of a hospital. Among the nearly 6,500 hospitals in the United States, only 235 are run by physician administrators, according to a 2009 study in the journal Academic Medicine. But now new research suggests that having a doctor in charge at the top is connected to overall better patient care and a better hospital. The findings, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, are based on a review of 300 top-ranked American hospitals in the specialties of cancer, digestive disorders and heart surgery.