U.S. News & World Report Ranks Emory Among Nation's Top Hospitals

Emory University Hospital again joins the prestigious ranks of America's top medical institutions in the annual U.S. News & World Report guide to "America's Best Hospitals."

Emory ranked among the nation's best hospitals in eight specialties, including seven top 20 rankings -- including a Top 10 ranking for Ophthalmology. Overall, Emory is one of only 170 hospitals, out of more than 5,400 medical centers in the country to be named in even one of the magazine's top 50 specialty rankings. And its eight specialties are more than any other hospital in Georgia.

Emory is recognized in this year's comprehensive report for excellence in:

Specialty Rank
Ophthalmology 9
Geriatrics 11
Psychiatry 11
Heart and Heart Surgery 13
Neurology and Neurosurgery 13
Ear, Nose and Throat 19
Kidney Disease 20
Cancer 47

"The dedication and commitment to excellence by thousands of physicians, nurses, researchers, medical support staff and employees across the entire Emory Healthcare system is certainly validated by this report today," says John T. Fox, Emory Healthcare president and CEO. "While our mission of delivering compassionate care and scientific discovery is recognized each day by our patients, we are challenged daily by our own success to work even harder, to achieve greater outcomes, and to continue building a more patient and family-focused model of care that will maintain Emory's position as a world leader across all disciplines of medicine and clinical care."

Included in this year's ranking were cancer services. Emory is the only facility in Georgia to be ranked in the top 50 for cancer services.

"This is a reflection of the hard work and dedication put forth by everyone involved in cancer treatment, research and care at Emory University," says Brian Leyland-Jones, MD, PhD, director of Emory Winship Cancer Institute. "In addition, as we continue to work towards NCI cancer center designation we are actively recruiting extraordinary talent in basic, translational and clinical science to enhance the quality and depth of our research and to accelerate the pace of discovery."

Emory Winship is a partner in the Georgia Cancer Coalition, an innovative public/private partnership comprised of Georgia's leading hospitals, universities, biotech firms and non-profit and government agencies to help treat, prevent and save lives from cancer. Close relationships with the neighboring U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as Emory's own School of Medicine, Rollins School of Public Health and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, enhance the multidisciplinary nature of care and research at Emory Winship.

Emory Winship also was recently designated by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia as a "Blue Distinction Center for Complex and Rare Cancers," focusing on complex inpatient and surgical care. It is the only facility in the metropolitan Atlanta area to earn this designation.

The rankings in 12 of the 16 specialties weigh three elements equally: reputation, death rate, and a set of care-related factors such as nursing and patient services. In these 12 specialties, hospitals have to pass through several gates to be ranked and considered a Best Hospital:

The first gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked at all by requiring that any of three conditions be met--to be a teaching hospital, to be affiliated with a teaching hospital, or to have at least six important medical technologies from a defined list of 13.

The second gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked in a particular specialty. To be eligible, the hospital had to either have at least a specified volume in certain procedures and conditions over three years, or had to have been nominated in our yearly specialist survey.
The third gate is whether a hospital does well enough to be ranked, based on its reputation, death rate, and factors like nurse staffing and technology.

In the four other specialties--ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology--ranking is based solely on reputation, derived from the three most recent physician surveys.