U.S. News & World Report Ranks Top Hospitals for 2007

WebMD (7/14, Hitti) reported, "Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore is the nation's top hospital, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2007 list of America's best hospitals." WebMD noted, "The magazine considered 5,462 U.S. hospitals for their annual list of top hospitals. Only 18 hospitals made the list." Number two on the list was the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles coming in third. U.S. News & World Report's rankings "are based on factors including hospital quality in 16 medical specialties." More than 850,000 physicians were surveyed, "asking them to rank the top five hospitals in their specialty for difficult cases, regardless of location or expense." Rankings are also based "on hospital death rates in Medicare patients with certain conditions, the number of patients and nurses, hospital credentials, and the availability of advanced medical technology." However, the rankings do not include "military or veterans hospitals because the magazine couldn't get government data needed to rank those hospitals."