We at U.S. News & World Report have put out our yearly list of the “Best Hospitals.” This list can help people who are looking for care for a wide range of problems choose where to go.
Decision Points talked to Ben Harder, the managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News, about how we build our rankings and what’s going on in the country’s hospitals.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes a hospital good or great?
We look at how well hospitals do in a lot of different areas since a patient doesn’t simply need a hospital. They need to go to the hospital for a specific condition or surgery. We want to address the question, “Not just which hospitals are good or great, but which hospitals are good and what are they good at?”
For these varied services and specialties, we publish more than three dozen reviews of each institution. It could not be the same hospital that is best for cancer as it is for a knee replacement.
So how do you determine that?
Because U.S. taxpayers pay for a lot of the health care that is given in our nation through programs like Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid, we have access to an amazing amount of data. We keep a record of every hospitalization that a Medicare beneficiary has had, and that record has a lot of information in it.
We look at the reason the patient was admitted, the care they had, the conditions they had when they got there, and what happened to them after they left. If we look at it across tens of millions of times a patient has gone to the hospital, we can get a really clear image of which hospitals are good and what they’re good at.
One thing that consumers really care about is that prices have to be clear by law to minimize sticker shock. Are hospitals making progress in that area?
For the most part, they have been following the law, at least in letter. As far as I can tell from what I’ve heard from sources, the information that providers have given out thus far hasn’t really affected how people are making decisions. It’s hard to understand a lot of it. It’s broken up. It may be machine-readable, but people can’t actually read it, so it hasn’t really changed how patients make decisions. What my sources tell me has changed is the information that different people in the health care ecosystem can get. There is now more information and transparency for health systems and insurers, which may help lower costs for some patients. It might even make things more expensive for some patients.
You talked about what the government does to provide health care. What do you think the president’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” will do to hospital treatment in the future?
Experts tell me that the biggest change will be that many Americans will have less coverage. There will be fewer people on Medicaid. There will probably be fewer people who sign up for the [Affordable Care Act] exchange plans. There will be other changes that may lower the money that health care providers can expect to make. For example, they might get less money for each patient or have patients who aren’t covered at all. However, because of the [Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act], hospitals have to give emergency care to those patients. They can rack up huge costs, and they might not get paid for them. This might be a life-or-death situation for a lot of hospitals. They are under a lot of pressure to make money, and they may not be able to cut costs.
