California Hospitals Ranked in U.S. News’ Online Rating System

U.S. News & World Report has released a new online hospital rating system, which grades the performance of nearly every U.S. hospital -- including many in California -- on five common surgical procedures and conditions, the Manteca Bulletin reports.

For example, 10 Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California received high ratings for at least one common procedure(Manteca Bulletin, 5/21).

Details of Rating System

The rating system, called Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings, grades the performance of nearly every U.S. hospital on five common surgical procedures and conditions.

The rating system, called Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings, is the largest expansion to U.S. News' hospital quality analyses since it began publishing its "Best Hospitals" lists 25 years ago, according to a release.

U.S. News created the new ratings to help patients identify nearby facilities that excel in caring for common conditions.

Patients now can use the publication's website to find any U.S. hospital and see whether it is "High Performing," "Average," or "Below Average" for these five procedures and conditions:

• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease;
• Congestive heart failure;
• Heart bypass;
• Hip replacement; and
• Knee replacement (U.S. News release, 5/20).

To assess performance on the five conditions, U.S. News evaluated 4,600 facilities for their performance across more than 25 quality measures -- including readmissions, mortality, infections and patient experience scores -- and analyzed the records of more than five million patients. The ratings were based on data from the American Hospital Association, CMS and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (Rice, Modern Healthcare, 5/20).

U.S. News did not rate a hospital's performance on a procedure if it was performed on too few patients to conduct a rigorous statistical analysis. About 1,700 hospitals treated too few patients for a certain procedure to be included in the rating system (U.S. News release, 5/20).

Hospitals' Performance

Overall, the new system found 90% of eligible hospitals were considered "High Performing" or "Average."

For any given procedure, about 10% of hospitals were considered "High Performing" and another 10% were considered "Below Average" (U.S. News release, 5/20).

Thirty-four hospitals were considered "High Performing" across all five procedures and conditions, and another six that do not offer bypass surgery were considered "High Performing" across all four procedures and conditions that they did offer (Harder, U.S. News, 5/20).