Best hospitals in North Carolina? These are top places to receive care, report finds
The latest North Carolina hospital rankings are out, and some of the top medical centers also made their mark on a national scale.
For the 12th year in a row, Duke University Hospital in Durham ranked as the No. 1 hospital in the state, according to results published Tuesday, Aug. 1. Also making it into the top five on the U.S. News & World Report list:
- UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill at No. 2
- Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte at No. 3
- UNC Rex Hospital in Raleigh at No. 4
- FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst at No. 5
- Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro at No. 5 (tie)
Several of the hospitals that topped the North Carolina list received high scores for specialty care. Duke University hospital ranked No. 7 in the United States for ophthalmology, results show.
Though children’s hospitals are on a separate list, two places in the state also performed especially well when it came to pediatric cardiology and heart surgery. Those include Duke University Hospital ranking No. 2 and Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center landing at No. 8 nationwide.
But on a national level, no medical centers in North Carolina made it onto this year’s Best Hospitals Honor Roll. That list includes 22 hospitals across the country that demonstrate “exceptional breadth of excellence across clinical specialties,” U.S. News & World Report said in a news release.
How are the top hospitals chosen?
U.S. News & World Report has ranked hospitals since 1990. This year, analysts made changes as they considered “outpatient outcomes in key specialty rankings and surgical ratings, the expanded inclusion of other outpatient data, an increased weight on objective quality measures, a reduced weight on expert opinion and more.”
To create its list of top-notch hospitals, the report used data from the U.S. government and medical professionals. For 15 adult care specialties — such as cancer care and urology — the website said it weighed “objective measures such as risk-adjusted mortality rates, patient experience, level of nursing care and how successfully each hospital helps patients get back home.”
In all, more than 4,500 health care facilities were studied nationwide.
“We use a national standard to determine which hospitals receive a ranking in their respective state,” U.S. News & World Report told McClatchy News in an email. “Only 484 hospitals, about one-tenth of all U.S. hospitals, met that standard this year.”
In North Carolina, just 17 of the 136 hospitals that were considered met the standards to be ranked. To see the full list of top hospitals and highest-ranking children’s facilities, you can visit health.usnews.com.
This story was originally published August 2, 2023 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Best hospitals in North Carolina? These are top places to receive care, report finds."
