Healthgrades Names 100 Best Hospitals for 2017

The healthcare quality rating service claims that patients treated in their Top 100 hospitals have a 27% lower risk of dying than patients treated in hospitals that did not receive the award.

Healthgrades, the online healthcare provider rating service, this week released its widely read list of America's 50 and 100 Best Hospitals for 2017, with few changes seen from the 2016 list.

As in 2016, the Top 50 hospitals, representing the top 1% of all hospitals, were located in 22 states. No hospitals cracked the Top 50 in 28 states, nor the Top 100 in 23 states. California had the most Top 50 hospitals, with 10, and 12 other California hospitals were in the Top 100. Illinois followed with all seven of its selections in the Top 50.

Massachusetts placed only one hospital on the Top 50 list: Baystate Medical Center, a 716-bed independent academic medical center in Springfield. Only three other Massachusetts hospitals made the Top 100 list, down from eight in 2016.

View the Healthgrades Top 100 Hospitals

Healthgrades designates Top 100 hospitals as those have been in the top 2% of hospitals in the nation for exhibiting clinical excellence for at least three consecutive years. The Top 50 hospitals are those have been in the top 1% for at least six consecutive years.

Healthgrades evaluates hospital quality for conditions and procedures based solely on clinical outcomes for the most common in-hospital procedures and conditions and adjust for risk factors, such as age, gender and medical condition.

The analysis is based on more than 45 million Medicare medical claims records for the most recent three-year time period available from nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide.

Healthgrades says the top performing hospitals also outperform their peers in treating a core group of conditions that account for more than 80% of mortalities in areas evaluated by Healthgrades, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis, and stroke.

Patients treated in Healthgrades' Top 100 hospitals have, on average, a 27.1% lower risk of dying than if they were treated in hospitals that did not receive this award. If all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to the Healthgrades Top 100, on average, 179,438 lives could have been saved.

In a whitepaper released with the rankings, Healthgrades said that many Top 100 hospitals engage patients as participants in their care. For example:

• Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, WA implemented the Orthopedic Patient-Peer Partner program, an idea put forth by the medical center's orthopedic patients who have undergone joint replacement surgery and return as volunteers to support others who are preparing to undergo hip, knee or shoulder replacement.
   
• HealthPartners hospitals in Minnesota works with first responders to extend care to patients in their homes. Through the Community Paramedic Program, the two largest hospitals in the HealthPartners system work with local first responders to help patients participate in their own care.
   
• Penrose St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs, CO, which has been named one of America's 50 Best Hospitals for 10 consecutive years, uses multiple strategies to engage consumers, including an inter-visit communication program that provides digital health coaching.

"Hospitals that have achieved America's Best Hospitals distinction have sustained high quality outcomes for their patients over many years and often, offer programs that engage consumers and their overall communities in their care," Healthgrades CMO Brad Bowman, MD, said in remarks accompanying the study.

"Healthcare consumerism is requiring hospitals and health systems to innovate in a variety of areas, including quality, to meet growing expectations about the level of care, personalization and convenience," he said.