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Doing a little online research, apparently it's been a slow and steady fall over the years. In the beginning (mid 1990s -can’t find link but it 1997 ranked 5th) it was ranked in the top 5 and mentioned in the same breath as Mayo, Cleveland, and Hopkins. As late as 2012 it was in the top 10. https://www.wral.com/u-s-news-world-...best/11321554/
Any ideas why? As the area has boomed and become a more attractive place to live/work/play I would expect the hospital to better attract patients and talented staff (top docs/specialists, nurses, leaders/admin etc) and therefore, if anything, to improve upon its rankings.
Note: It is still highly rated as a medical school and very highly regarded for residencies (where the real learning happens) in the “big three” of surgery, internal medicine, and anesthesiology. https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate...rgery-rankings
My understanding is that the ranking methodology changed this year, and many hospitals changed rankings. Possibly due to specific specialties etc. Wake Forest Baptist also dropped out of the national rankings. Most folks don't put much stock in these rankings, except the nationally-ranked top-tier research university rankings.
US News still ranks Duke University # 8 as a nationally-ranked top-tier research university.
Finding out what the ranking criteria is would be a good start.
I read the article explaining the changes in ranking methodology, but it didn't make much sense to me. The gist was the new rankings didn't mean that hospitals like Duke and Wake Forest didn't suddenly start screwing up, but they just used different "criteria".
My thinking is that they just wanted to come out with a different list to boost attention. This is subjective to some degree.
There were new "soft and fuzzy" criteria introduce in the 2019-2020 rankings.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in hospital rankings, today released the 2019-20 Best Hospitals rankings. The new and revised 30th edition provides a multifaceted assessment on nearly every hospital nationwide that is designed to assist patients and their doctors in making informed decisions about where to seek care. This year, U.S. News updated the methodology in its 12 data-driven specialty rankings, which cover Cancer, Cardiology & Heart Surgery, Diabetes & Endocrinology, Ear, Nose & Throat, Gastroenterology & GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Gynecology, Nephrology, Neurology & Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology & Lung Surgery, and Urology. Updates include: Two additional patient-centered measures in each specialty: patient experience score and a new outcome measure that examines how often patients go directly home from the hospital rather than transitioning to a nursing home or other institutional care setting. An enhanced risk-adjustment model that accounts for differences in patient populations so that hospitals that treat sicker patients are not penalized.
Harmonization of outcome measurement in the specialty rankings with the U.S. News Procedures & Conditions ratings, which debuted in 2015 to evaluate hospitals in nine common services.
"In the three decades since U.S. News began evaluating hospitals, we periodically have revamped our measures to enhance the decision support our rankings and ratings provide to patients," said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News. "This year we revised the methodology to incorporate new measures of patient-centered care and to enhance how we account for differences in hospitals' patient populations. The new model provides a more comprehensive assessment that is useful to patients, families and their medical professionals."
There were new "soft and fuzzy" criteria introduce in the 2019-2020 rankings.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in hospital rankings, today released the 2019-20 Best Hospitals rankings. The new and revised 30th edition provides a multifaceted assessment on nearly every hospital nationwide that is designed to assist patients and their doctors in making informed decisions about where to seek care. This year, U.S. News updated the methodology in its 12 data-driven specialty rankings, which cover Cancer, Cardiology & Heart Surgery, Diabetes & Endocrinology, Ear, Nose & Throat, Gastroenterology & GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Gynecology, Nephrology, Neurology & Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology & Lung Surgery, and Urology. Updates include: Two additional patient-centered measures in each specialty: patient experience score and a new outcome measure that examines how often patients go directly home from the hospital rather than transitioning to a nursing home or other institutional care setting. An enhanced risk-adjustment model that accounts for differences in patient populations so that hospitals that treat sicker patients are not penalized.
Harmonization of outcome measurement in the specialty rankings with the U.S. News Procedures & Conditions ratings, which debuted in 2015 to evaluate hospitals in nine common services.
"In the three decades since U.S. News began evaluating hospitals, we periodically have revamped our measures to enhance the decision support our rankings and ratings provide to patients," said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News. "This year we revised the methodology to incorporate new measures of patient-centered care and to enhance how we account for differences in hospitals' patient populations. The new model provides a more comprehensive assessment that is useful to patients, families and their medical professionals."
Those two additional measures are not soft and fuzzy. When you have a hospital like HSS that is doing lots of easy/clean ortho cases vs a level one trauma center that gets patients air lifted in from all over, that impacts your outcomes. Also, those younger, healthier patients who get thier knee replaced go right home after surgery. The 80 year olds go to an SNF for rehab first.
Exactly - like I said "soft and Fuzzy". All about the money and rankings ! Nobody gives a crap if 80 year old gramps croaks, that's to be expected. This is a piece by US News and World Report to grab headlines, sort of like the National Inquirer. Somebody came up with this piece of crap ratings study in order to generate revenue and attention.
Hospitals like Duke need to ignore the new soft and fuzzy crap, and keep moving on.
Last edited by slackjack; 08-07-2019 at 09:01 PM..
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