Toledo missing from magazine's best hospitals list

7/13/2006

For the second year in a row, no Toledo area hospitals appear in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking of the country's best hospitals and medical specialty programs.

But several of the magazine's top-ranked hospitals can be found within a two-hour drive.

The Cleveland Clinic and University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Systems in Ann Arbor both received some of the highest marks this year, scoring well in endocrinology, orthopedics, heart surgery, and kidney disease treatment.

Overall, the Cleveland Clinic ranked third and UM's hospitals ranked 12th. The top-scoring hospital in the country was Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

The rankings appear in the magazine's July 17 edition.

Other Ohio and Michigan hospitals making this year's lists include the Columbus Children's Hospital, Ohio State University Medical Center, Riverside Methodist Hospital-Ohio Health in Columbus, Ohio State University James Cancer Hospital, University Hospitals of Cleveland, MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, and the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

Also, the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Harper University Hospital in Detroit, the Providence Hospital in Southfield, Mich., Akron General Medical Center, and Summa Health System in Akron made the lists.

The rankings, now in their 17th year, have become the most widely viewed and popular guides to hospital quality.

The publication says it scores hospitals in 16 areas of medical care, using many criteria, including mortality rates, nurse-to-patient ratios, and reputation among certified physicians.

The rankings were drawn from a sampling of 5,189 hospitals.

St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo was the last area hospital to make the magazine's rankings, scoring 50th among the country's top 50 hormonal disorder programs in 2004.

However, in an advertisement by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association in this year's edition, the University Medical Center in Toledo and St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima, Ohio, were among 173 hospitals cited for adhering to the associations' care guidelines for heart failure, coronary artery disease, and stroke.