U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals Rankings Place UT Southwestern as No. 1 in North Texas

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Mar 29, 2011, 08:39 ET

DALLAS, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- UT Southwestern Medical Center ranked as the best hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth in the newly expanded U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Hospitals rankings for 52 metropolitan areas.

In the 2010-11 U.S. News & World Report national report on health care providers, UT Southwestern was nationally ranked in six specialty-care areas: urology; diabetes/endocrinology; gynecology; kidney disorders; neurology and neurosurgery; and ear, nose and throat.

"We are committed to excellence in all our clinical areas and are delighted that we already have achieved recognition that places us among the very best of our peer academic medical institutions nationally," said Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky, president of UT Southwestern. "This report offers further validation to patients in North Texas and across the country of the exceptional patient care they receive at UT Southwestern.

"Because we can attract and retain many of the brightest minds in medicine and science today, patient care naturally benefits from being fully integrated at UT Southwestern with our breakthrough research discoveries and the rigor associated with teaching the next generation of health care providers."

The new metropolitan-area rankings recognize more than 600 hospitals in or near major cities with a record of high performance in key medical specialties, including 132 of the 152 hospitals already identified by U.S. News as the best in the nation. The data are available online at http://usnews.com/besthospitals.

In the magazine's metro area rankings, nationally ranked Best Hospitals are at the top because of their extraordinary expertise. Using the same data that defined the 2010-11 national rankings, U.S. News reviewed all hospitals nationwide that met certain stringent standards for patient volume and other important benchmarks. From that group of hospitals, U.S. News then selected facilities that scored in the top 25 percent in at least one of 16 medical specialties and ranked those located in metro areas with a population of 1 million or more.

"For most medical problems, the new Best Hospitals metro rankings can tell you which hospitals are worth considering if you live in or near a major metro area. These are hospitals capable of providing first-rate care for the majority of patients, even for those with serious conditions or who need demanding procedures," said U.S. News' Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow in a statement accompanying the rankings.

Dr. Bruce A. Meyer, executive vice president for health system affairs at UT Southwestern, said, "These rankings confirm a growing recognition nationally for excellence in clinical care at UT Southwestern. We are enormously proud of our physicians and of all the members of our health care delivery team who each day strive to provide the very best care.

"We also are delighted that our partner, Parkland Memorial Hospital, which is staffed by UT Southwestern physicians, was ranked the third-best hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area."

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http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/home/news/index.html

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SOURCE UT Southwestern Medical Center