Mayo tops hospital rankings for third year

For the third straight year, Mayo Clinic in Rochester has topped U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospital rankings in the No. 1 spot.

"We’re delighted, obviously, to receive this recognition to acknowledge the terrific work our staff does," Mayo Clinic CEO Dr. John Noseworthy said of the rankings, which were released late Monday night. "This is just one part of the bigger puzzle, but it is nice to be recognized. It’s all about our staff."

Mayo Clinic in Rochester was followed by its usual competitors, Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins Hospital in the second and third spots.

In the No. 11 spot, Mayo Clinic showed up again with its Arizona campus leapfrogging nine levels from its place at No. 20 in 2017.

While the shine of topping the rankings again was diminished somewhat by Monday’s CNN story about a family who claims they had to "escape" from Mayo Clinic, the honor remains one of the clinic’s favorites.

Noseworthy recounted a meeting he had with the publisher of U.S News & World Reports during a speech at the annual Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce meeting four years ago. He pointed out to the magazine’s leaders what he saw as a flaw in how the rankings were calculated.

At the end of an hourlong meeting, he showed them a color graph listing Mayo Clinic as receiving the most rankings in some specialty areas.

"I asked them, could they help me explain to our trustees and staff why Mayo Clinic wasn’t number one that year? They were literally silent for a minute and they asked to have the chart," Noseworthy said.

He says the metrics for the rankings, which include 16 specialty areas, now take into account treating "seriously complex patients."

"The Mayo Clinic model is really engineered for these patients that come here from everywhere to get the puzzle solved, get complex care given and to get hope when hope isn’t apparent," Noseworthy said. "The difference between Mayo Clinic and other terrific medical centers is becoming more apparent."

The annual ranking consists of 20 hospitals with the highest combined overall scores in 16 medical and surgical specialties.

Mayo Clinic Rochester ranked first in six specialities — diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery, geriatrics, gynecology, nephrology and neurology and neurosurgery.

It placed second in four specialties — cardiology and heart surgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and urology. It ranked third in cancer.

The national magazine has been ranking hospitals every year since 1990. Mayo Clinic has been a fixture on the magazine list from the beginning.

While there are many other annual hospital lists, US News & World Reports has grown to be the most popular.

Competition to be on the list has grown, and hospitals prominently advertise their rankings every year.

The magazine touts its annual rankings as reaching more than 300 million "decision-makers" in 2015.

1. Mayo Clinic Rochester

2. Cleveland Clinic

3. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore

4. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

5. University of Michigan Hospitals, Ann Arbor

6. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco

7. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

8. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles

9. Stanford Health Care, Stanford, Calif.

10. New-York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia and Cornell, N.Y.

11. (tie) Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis

11.(tie) Mayo Clinic Phoenix

13. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago

14. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

15. (tie) NYU Langone Hospital, New York

15. (tie) UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside, Pittsburgh

5.