U.S. News & World Gives San Gabriel Valley Hospitals Mixed Grades

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles may be known as a great place to live, shop, surf and dine, but it's also not a bad place to be when you're sick, according to U.S. News & World's rankings of best hospitals. The City of Angels had three standout hospitals listed on its 20-institution Honor Roll.

UCLA Medical Center garnered the highest score in the county, coming in nationwide at No. 6 followed by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at No. 8, and Keck Hospital of USC at No. 16. Medical care for the county's children is even better. Among children's hospitals, Children's Hospital Los Angeles was judged the fifth best.

There are, however, some hospitals in the region that didn't impress U.S. News & World. Dozens failed to rank nationally in any specialty including Silver Lake Medical Center, Sherman Oaks Hospital, San Gabriel Medical Center, Valley Presbyterian, West Hills Hospital and Medical Center, the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital and Residential Services, Mission Community Hospital, Las Encinas Hospital, Kindred Hospital-Baldwin Park, Joyce Eisenberg-Keefer Medical Center, Glendora Community Hospital, Alhambra Hospital Medical Center, and Monrovia Memorial Hospital.

In the San Gabriel Valley area, Citrus Valley Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center, Huntington Memorial Hospital, Methodist Hospital of Southern California all earned the publication's "high performing" rank in one or more departments.

“We use a number of different measures to assess hospital quality and we separately assess each hospital in many different specialties and services that hospitals offer,” Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News told Patch.

The hospital rankings for 2019-20 include the honor roll, top ranked hospitals in 12 specialty categories and the top ranked hospitals by state and metro region.

Across the 12 specialty rankings — which cover categories like cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, and nephrology — U.S. News & World added two new measures that are patient centered: patient outcome and patient experience.

“In each of those areas, we are now assessing how successful a hospital is at sending patients home,” Harder said. The rankings now look at whether after receiving care, patients end up going home or require further care at a rehab facility or even at a different hospital.

“That’s an important outcome for patients,” Harder said. “Patients do want to be home recovering and spending time with their families.”

However, the methodology adjusts for how sick a patient was when they were admitted to the hospital so that hospitals that admit sicker patients are not penalized in the rankings.

The second patient-centered measure added to the methodology is patient experience. Data from a federally mandated survey was used to assess this measure, according to U.S. News.

The survey covers topics like how good doctors and nurses were at communicating with patients and how well a patient understood how to take care of themselves after leaving the hospital.

“So that patient experience dimension is one that we added to our specialty rankings this year, and obviously that’s important for patients too because they not only want to get good care and have a good outcome but also feel that what mattered to them was considered and taken into account in the care they got,” Harder said.

In preparing its lists, U.S. News analyzed data from nearly 5,000 medical centers and survey responses from more than 30,000 physicians to rank hospitals in 16 adult specialties, including cancer, diabetes, rheumatology and more. Survival rates, patient safety, specialized staff and hospital reputation were among the factors weighed.

For 2019-20, the Mayo Clinic claimed the No. 1 spot on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll. Massachusetts General Hospital ranked No. 2, followed by Johns Hopkins Hospital at No. 3. The Honor Roll is a distinction awarded to hospitals ranked in the top 20 for delivering exceptional treatment across multiple areas of care.

U.S. News reported that, in addition to being No. 6 on the Honor Roll, UCLA Medical Center is ranked nationally in 14 adult specialties and 10 children's specialties. It also achieved the highest rating possible in 8 procedures or conditions. Its ranking in 14 specialties is as follows: Cancer #21; Cardiology & Heart Surgery #8; Diabetes & Endocrinology #4; Ear, Nose & Throat #11; Gastroenterology & GI Surgery #6; Geriatrics #4; Gynecology Not Ranked; Nephrology #3; Neurology & Neurosurgery #6; Ophthalmology #5; Orthopedics #8; Psychiatry #8; Pulmonology & Lung Surgery #3; Rehabilitation Not Ranked; Rheumatology #9; Urology #10.

U.S. News reported that Cedars-Sinai -- a general medical and surgical facility and teaching hospital -- in addition to being No. 8 on the Honor Roll, is nationally ranked in 12 adult specialties and rated high performing in 9 adult procedures and conditions. Its rankings in the 12 specialties are as follows: Cancer #12; Cardiology & Heart Surgery #3; Diabetes & Endocrinology #16; Ear, Nose & Throat #38; Gastroenterology & GI Surgery #2; Geriatrics #12; Gynecology #8; Nephrology #10; Neurology & Neurosurgery #12; Orthopedics #3; Pulmonology & Lung Surgery #4; Rheumatology Not Ranked; Urology #12.

Keck Hospital of USC, in addition to its No. 16 Honor Roll placement, is nationally ranked in 9 adult specialties and rated high performing in 1 adult specialty and 8 procedures and conditions. It is a general medical and surgical facility and a teaching hospital. Its rankings in the nine specialties are Cancer #21; Cardiology & Heart Surgery #11; Ear, Nose & Throat Not Ranked; Gastroenterology & GI Surgery #13; Geriatrics #6; Nephrology #13; Neurology & Neurosurgery #16; Ophthalmology #11; Orthopedics High Performing; Pulmonology & Lung Surgery #33; Urology #4.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota took the No.1 spot on the 2019-20 honor roll, followed by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Cleveland Clinic and New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell rounded out the top five on the honor roll.

The remaining hospitals on the honor roll are:

• UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles (6)
• UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco (7)
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles (8)
• NYU Langone Hospitals, New York, N.Y. (9)
• Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago (10)
• University of Michigan Hospitals-Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor (11)
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, Calif. (12)
• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston (13)
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York (14)
• UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside, Pittsburgh (15)
• Keck Hospital of USC, Los Angeles (16)
• University of Wisconsin Hospitals, Madison (17)
• Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia (tie) (18)
• Mayo Clinic-Phoenix (tie) (18)
• Houston Methodist Hospital (tie) (20)
• Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn. (tie) (20)

City News Service contributed to this report.