The Hype Over Hospital Rankings
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NYT
LAST week U.S. News and World Report released its annual list of “Best Hospitals.” Web sites are being updated to celebrate victories. (Johns Hopkins ranks No. 1!) Magazines will be plump with advertising. (NewYork-Presbyterian is first in New York and tied for seventh nationally!) And, because I am a reporter covering health care, my in-box is accumulating e-mails from the “Honor Roll” of the Top 18 hospitals.
But what does this annual exercise mean for patients? And what does it say about American health care?
After all, Harvard and Princeton, which tied for No. 1 in the magazine’s 2013 Top 10 national universities list, didn’t take out ads to proclaim their triumph; they will fill their classrooms no matter. And as in the college ratings, there are no big surprises in the top hospital group: they are the big academic medical centers — the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic. More to the point, even though you might well fly across the country for four years of schooling, you are far more likely to stay near your home for medical care. No one’s flying to Mayo in Minnesota to get inhalers for asthma, even though it ranks No. 1 for pulmonary medicine.
But American hospitals are a bit like restaurants, competing for your business (and donations). As such they go all out to promote their brand, even though hospitals and doctors are not permitted to advertise in many other countries.
(More here.)
LAST week U.S. News and World Report released its annual list of “Best Hospitals.” Web sites are being updated to celebrate victories. (Johns Hopkins ranks No. 1!) Magazines will be plump with advertising. (NewYork-Presbyterian is first in New York and tied for seventh nationally!) And, because I am a reporter covering health care, my in-box is accumulating e-mails from the “Honor Roll” of the Top 18 hospitals.
But what does this annual exercise mean for patients? And what does it say about American health care?
After all, Harvard and Princeton, which tied for No. 1 in the magazine’s 2013 Top 10 national universities list, didn’t take out ads to proclaim their triumph; they will fill their classrooms no matter. And as in the college ratings, there are no big surprises in the top hospital group: they are the big academic medical centers — the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic. More to the point, even though you might well fly across the country for four years of schooling, you are far more likely to stay near your home for medical care. No one’s flying to Mayo in Minnesota to get inhalers for asthma, even though it ranks No. 1 for pulmonary medicine.
But American hospitals are a bit like restaurants, competing for your business (and donations). As such they go all out to promote their brand, even though hospitals and doctors are not permitted to advertise in many other countries.
(More here.)
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