The Triad’s three main hospitals combined for just one national specialty-care listing in the high-profile U.S. News & World Report rankings for the second consecutive report.
The magazine released its Best Hospitals ranking for 2024-25 Tuesday at health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings. It is the 35th annual ranking.
There were 19 North Carolina hospitals reviewed, led by Duke University, which was selected fourth among the 20 hospitals on the U.S. News nationwide honor roll.
Moses Cone slipped from being tied for fifth to a three-way tie for sixth. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist improved from ninth to the three-way tie for sixth. Forsyth Medical Center went from tied for 16th to a three-way tie for 14th.
Cone was ranked No. 41 nationally for rehabilitation services, down from 36th in the 2022-23 ranking. None of the three Triad hospitals had a high-performing national listing.
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Novant said in a statement “foundational to everything we do is our commitment to safety and the highest quality of care. We’re proud to share that the report recognized Novant Health hospitals with 39 high-performing designations for remarkable care, including for major heart and vascular, cancer and orthopedic procedures.”
Atrium focused much of its statement that on its Charlotte-area hospital facilities while pointing on Baptist being ranked tied with Cone in the Triad.
“This year, U.S. News & World Report has honored nearly three dozen of our Advocate Health system hospitals as among the nation’s very best,” said Eugene Woods, chief executive of Atrium and Baptist parent Advocate Health.
Cone said in a statement that its ranking also reflects performances by Wesley Long Hospital in Greensboro and Annie Penn Hospital in Reidsville.
“It is great to be recognized for the truly exceptional care that we provide at Cone Health,” said Dr. Mary Jo Cagle, Cone’s president and chief executive.
“Choosing the right hospital to match your needs shouldn’t be a guessing game,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at U.S. News.
“The 2024-2025 edition of Best Hospitals provides patients and their families clear, data-driven insights on hospital performance and empowers Americans to choose the facility best suited to their specific health care needs.”
How it works
U.S. News said its procedures and conditions methodology are “based entirely on objective measures of quality, such as risk-adjusted mortality rates, patient experience, level of nursing care and how successfully each hospital helps patients get back home.”
Hospital’s performance is evaluated on objective measures, such as risk-adjusted mortality rates, preventable complications and level of nursing care, using data from millions of records provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
For the 2023-24 review, U.S. News added new data on care provided to patients with Medicare Advantage insurance and on care provided to outpatients, nearly doubling the number of patients included in its annual data analysis.
Nearly 5,000 hospitals nationwide were reviewed in 15 adult specialties and 21 surgical procedures.
US News defines a high-performance specialty ranking as being outside the top 50 nationally, but “was significantly better than average” and typically in the top 10% in the category.
The number of individual procedures and conditions were 20 in the latest report. They are: abdominal aortic aneurysm repair; back surgery (spinal fusion); aortic valve surgery; heart bypass surgery; heart failure; colon cancer; COPD; diabetes; gynecological cancer surgery; heart attack; hip replacement; hip fracture; kidney failure; knee replacement; leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma; lung cancer surgery; pneumonia; prostate cancer surgery; stroke; and TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement).
Cone was ranked in 12 out of 20 categories: abdominal aortic aneurism repair; heart bypass surgery; heart failure; colon cancer; COPD; heart attack; hip replacement; knee replacement; lung cancer surgery; pneumonia; stroke; and TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement).
Baptist also was ranked in 12: abdominal aortic aneurysm repair; aortic valve surgery; heart bypass surgery; heart failure; colon cancer; COPD; gynecological cancer surgery; kidney failure; leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma; lung cancer surgery; prostate cancer surgery and stroke.
Forsyth was ranked in eight categories: heart bypass surgery; heart failure; colon cancer; COPD; hip replacement; knee replacement; lung cancer surgery; and pneumonia.
Alamance Medical Center was ranked separately in three categories: heart attack; heart failure; and pneumonia
As has been the pattern for U.S. News for several years, the rankings tilted again toward academic medical centers, both in North Carolina and nationally.
Of the 13 non-academic medical centers in N.C. reviewed by U.S. News, only Cone and the main WakeMed campus in Raleigh had a nationally ranked adult specialty.
In 2019, U.S. News made a significant change in how it measures the hospitals’ performance in the 15 specialty categories.
The methodology change “enhanced the way we account for differences in patient populations, and how those differences affect hospitals’ performance, and incorporated additional patient-centered measures reflecting patient satisfaction and how often patients go directly home from the hospital,” U.S. News said.
The 2019 change left Baptist without a top 50 specialty listing in the last five reports after achieving a specialty category ranking annually for more than a quarter-century.
Mixed response
The release of the annual U.S. News report stirs discussion about the value of hospital rankings as more groups produce listings.
Some advocacy groups, such as the American Hospital Association, complain that academic medical centers get lower quality scores on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compares, in part because they treat the sickest of the sick, along with a significant number of low-income patients without insurance.
Medicare officials say the rankings are risk-adjusted to take into account the kinds of patients a hospital serves, and that hospitals with more stars have tended to have lower death and readmission rates.
Healthcare systems tend to cite the rankings that put them in the best light. For example, Novant has said national health-care watchdog The Leapfrog Group is “the rating system that we particularly measure ourselves against … for safety, quality and patient experience.”
In the spring 2024 Leapfrog report released in May, Forsyth Medical Center retained its “A” rating for patient safety, while Cone and Wesley Long Hospital were lowered from “A” to “B.” Forsyth was rated an A for the 11th consecutive report, while Cone dropped to a B after five consecutive reports at A.
Meanwhile, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist remained at B for the second consecutive report.
Leapfrog researchers said they have determined that when compared with a hospital rated an A, patients face on average a 35% greater risk of avoidable death at a B hospital, an 88% greater risk at a C hospital and a 92% greater risk at a D or F hospital.
Novant said in its U.S. News statement that “while each industry ranking differs in regards to criteria and methodology, each rating system has its own merit, empowering patients with resources to make the best healthcare decisions for themselves.”
“As always, our expert care teams will continue to innovate as we deliver the highest quality care for every patient in every setting.”
