Sarasota Health News

SMH retains U.S. News ranking

David Gulliver - posted 9:15 am Thursday, July 16

Sarasota Memorial Hospital held onto its ranking in the widely-read “America’s Best Hospitals” rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

The magazine uses a mix of data analysis and surveying to develop rankings of hospitals in 16 specialties, such as cancer, orthopedics and heart care and surgery.

Sarasota Memorial placed 37th in the country for geriatric care, moving up from 43rd place last year. Hospital officials call it a significant specialty, because geriatrics care demands skill in several other fields, and one that matters to the region’s large population of senior citizens.

But it is a decline from the hospital’s heyday in 2004 and 2005, when it ranked in seven specialties, including all three specialties mentioned above.

It fell from six ranked categories in 2006 to two in 2007 and one, geriatrics, in 2008. Hospital officials said the decline stemmed from a change in how the magazine calculates mortality rates. They also have long faulted the magazine’s use of a survey on hospitals’ reputations, saying it favors big, nationally known hospitals.

Avery Comarow, the project’s longtime editor, said the magazine shifted from in-hospital mortality to 30-day mortality in 2007, the year of Sarasota Memorial’s big drop. The magazine does not discuss individual hospitals’ performance, but he suggested it might have been related to the reputation survey.

The magazine develops the rankings by combining three main tools: an analysis of mortality rates, a scorecard of services and technologies, and a national survey of physicians on hospitals' reputations. Each makes up about one-third of the score. This year, the 20th annual edition of the study, it added a patient safety index, which looks at preventable deaths and errors, and makes up 5 percent of the score.

The process begins by looking at a pool of 4,861 U.S. hospitals, then cuts it in half by limiting the anlaysis to teaching hospitals, hospitals with 200 or more beds, or hospitals with four or more of what the magazine calls key technologies. It trims the field further, to to 1,859 hospitals this year, by looking at only those with a minimum number of discharges or a recommendation in the physician survey in the last three years.

In the end, only 174 hospitals -- about 3.5 percent of the original field -- qualify for a top-50 ranking in any specialty.

No other Suncoast hospitals made the top 50, the magazine’s ranking cutoff, in any specialty. The big Florida winners were Shands at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and Tampa General Hospital, with seven top-50 rankings. The big winner nationwide was Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, which placed in all 16.

For more information, see the magazine’s searchable rankings here:

http://health.usnews.com/health/best-hospitals/

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Editor's note: Expanded with methodology, corrected counting error in Florida hospital totals, changed headline wording.





	SMH retains U.S. News ranking David Gulliver - posted 9:15 am Thursday, July 16 Sarasota Memorial Hospital held onto its ranking in the widely-read “America’s Best Hospitals” rankings by U.S. News & World Report. The magazine uses a mix of data analysis and surveying to develop rankings of hospitals in 16 specialties, such as cancer, orthopedics and heart care and surgery. Sarasota Memorial placed 37th in the country for geriatric care, moving up from 43rd place last year. Hospital officials call it a significant specialty, because geriatrics care demands skill in several other fields, and one that matters to the region’s large population of senior citizens. But it is a decline from the hospital’s heyday in 2004 and 2005, when it ranked in seven specialties, including all three specialties mentioned above. It fell from six ranked categories in 2006 to two in 2007 and one, geriatrics, in 2008. Hospital officials said the decline stemmed from a change in how the magazine calculates mortality rates. They also have long faulted the magazine’s use of a survey on hospitals’ reputations, saying it favors big, nationally known hospitals. Avery Comarow, the project’s longtime editor, said the magazine shifted from in-hospital mortality to 30-day mortality in 2007, the year of Sarasota Memorial’s big drop. The magazine does not discuss individual hospitals’ performance, but he suggested it might have been related to the reputation survey. The magazine develops the rankings by combining three main tools: an analysis of mortality rates, a scorecard of services and technologies, and a national survey of physicians on hospitals' reputations. Each makes up about one-third of the score. This year, the 20th annual edition of the study, it added a patient safety index, which looks at preventable deaths and errors, and makes up 5 percent of the score. The process begins by looking at a pool of 4,861 U.S. hospitals, then cuts it in half by limiting the anlaysis to teaching hospitals, hospitals with 200 or more beds, or hospitals with four or more of what the magazine calls key technologies. It trims the field further, to to 1,859 hospitals this year, by looking at only those with a minimum number of discharges or a recommendation in the physician survey in the last three years. In the end, only 174 hospitals -- about 3.5 percent of the original field -- qualify for a top-50 ranking in any specialty. No other Suncoast hospitals made the top 50, the magazine’s ranking cutoff, in any specialty. The big Florida winners were Shands at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and Tampa General Hospital, with seven top-50 rankings. The big winner nationwide was Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, which placed in all 16. For more information, see the magazine’s searchable rankings here: http://health.usnews.com/health/best-hospitals/ --- Editor's note: Expanded with methodology, corrected counting error in Florida hospital totals, changed headline wording.