Mational magazine ranks VUH as one of nation's top hospitals
Vanderbilt University Hospital and The Vanderbilt Clinic are among the best hospitals in the United States, according to the latest ranking by U.S. News & World Report magazine.
The seventh-annual assessment of health care facilities, dubbed "America's Best Hospitals," ranks institutions by 16 different specialties. This year's complete guide will appear in the national publication's Aug. 12 issue.
Vanderbilt University Hospital and The Vanderbilt Clinic ranked in six of the 16 specialty areas surveyed, including gynecology, otolaryngology, endocrinology, cancer, orthopaedics and rheumatology. No other Tennessee hospital is included in the national rankings of the 16 specialties.
"We are pleased that, once again, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been rated among the elite in the nation," said Dr. Roscoe R. Robinson, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs. "I'm proud of our institution and its people and hope this will lead toward even greater national recognition in the future."
The U.S. News ranking uses a method designed by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a noted social science research group at the University of Chicago, to rank the quality of the nation's hospitals each year. NORC's mathematical model combines reputation surveys, statistics and information related to quality, such as the ratio of registered nurses to beds. Nationwide, 126 hospitals were assessed.
"Any institution among those ranked in one of the specialties should be considered a leading center," the report states.
In Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Hospital and The Vanderbilt Clinic were ranked first in each of the 16 specialties among hospitals in the state, according to U.S. News' book America's Best Hospitals. This book, published last November, included results for all advanced-care hospitals in the nation, and was broken down by state. Those results, based on 1995 data, are generally consistent with this year's rankings.
The 16 specialties on which hospitals were ranked are: gynecology, otolaryngology, endocrinology, cancer, orthopaedics, rheumatology, AIDS, cardiology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, neurology, urology, ophthalmology, pediatrics, psychiatry and rehabilitation.