Healthgrades Reveals the Best U.S. Hospitals for Specialty Care in 2024

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Oct 24, 2023, 08:17 ET

Healthgrades announces the nation's top hospitals for exceptional performance in key medical specialties and introduces new outpatient orthopedic awards and ratings.

DENVER, Oct. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Healthgrades, the leading resource consumers use to find a doctor or hospital, today announced the recipients of Healthgrades 2024 Specialty Excellence Awards and Five-Star Specialty Care Ratings. This year's awards recognize hospitals with outstanding clinical performance in 16 specialty care areas, including cardiac surgery, critical care, and orthopedic surgery.

Hospital quality is an important, but often overlooked, factor for consumers to consider when selecting a medical specialist. To help consumers find the best care for their needs, Healthgrades uses star ratings and awards to identify the top-performing hospitals for specialty care. For this annual analysis, Healthgrades evaluated outcomes at approximately 4,500 hospitals. The ratings assess hospital performance across 31 common procedures and conditions.* Three awards recognize superior clinical performance in specialty care:

Healthgrades Specialty Excellence Award^™ - the top 5% or 10% of hospitals for 16 different specialty care areas
America's 100 Best Hospitals for Specialty Care^™ - this top honor is given to 100 hospitals for 11 different specialty care areas
America's 50 Best Hospitals for Specialty Care^™ - this top honor is given to 50 hospitals for three different specialty care areas

"We celebrate the recognized hospitals for their steadfast dedication to high quality specialty care," said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Data Science, Healthgrades. "Healthgrades 2024 Specialty Excellence Awards and Ratings showcase hospitals nationwide that deliver consistently exceptional patient outcomes in a given medical specialty."

By offering easy access to objective performance measures, Healthgrades gives consumers the information they need to find a hospital with a five-star rating in their procedure or condition. As the gap between one-star and five-star performers continues to widen, the ability to evaluate hospital quality has never been more critical. In fact, from 2020-2022, if all hospitals performed similarly to those receiving five stars:

215,667 lives could potentially have been saved**
149,521 complications could potentially have been avoided**

View the complete list of 2024 Specialty Excellence Award recipients.

To provide additional insights and education around these important topics, Healthgrades has launched the following resources:

For consumer audiences: The "Finding Quality Care" right care center provides educational content to help consumers understand what factors to consider when choosing healthcare and how Healthgrades can help. The "How Healthgrades Rates Hospitals and Why It Matters" infographic explains how we pick award recipients and the impact choosing the right hospital has on your likelihood of a positive outcome.
For health system audiences, we explore hospitals' most significant challenges in the "2024 Specialty Excellence Report."

*To be eligible for a Specialty Excellence Award, hospitals must receive a rating in one or more of the 31 procedures and conditions included in the determination of the award. Some awards, like the Cranial Neurosurgery Excellence Award^™, are based on a single procedure–cranial neurosurgery–while others, such as the Orthopedic Surgery Excellence Award™, are based on a grouping of three procedures: hip fracture treatment, total knee replacement, and total hip replacement. To learn more about Healthgrades ratings and awards determination process, see the 2024 Specialty Excellence Awards and Ratings Methodology.

**Statistics are based on Healthgrades analysis of MedPAR data for years 2020 through 2022 and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only.

About Healthgrades

Healthgrades is dedicated to empowering stronger and more meaningful connections between patients and healthcare professionals. As the #1 platform for finding a doctor and as a leader in healthcare transparency, we help millions of consumers each month find and schedule appointments with their healthcare professional of choice and prepare for their appointments with best-in-class, treatment-focused content.

Our health system, healthcare professional, and life sciences marketing solutions have been helping our partners reach and engage consumers who are on their way to the doctor for over 20 years.

Start your search for the right care at healthgrades.com.

SOURCE Healthgrades