The Johns Hopkins Hospital Ranked #3 in the Nation and #1 in Maryland

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine community

Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to announce that The Johns Hopkins Hospital ranked #3 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report's annual Best Hospitals list. We share this spot with our colleagues at UCLA Medical Center, who tied with us in this year's ranking of 4,716 hospitals nationally. In the state of Maryland, we again ranked #1—an honor for which we are also truly proud.

Massachusetts General Hospital ranked #1 this year, and we offer our sincere congratulations to our esteemed colleagues there and to those at all of the hospitals on the list.

In the past three years, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital and The Johns Hopkins Hospital have each held the #1 spot. We are in excellent company and delighted to be among institutions that continue to aim to deliver the very best care to patients.

Of course, we cannot offer that care or earn national accolades without all of you, and we want to express our gratitude for your consistent excellence. The nurses, faculty and staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine deliver the promise of medicine every single day, and for this we are so grateful. You should be tremendously proud of the care you provide, of this year's rankings and of the fact that The Johns Hopkins Hospital is the only one in the nation to have ranked #1 in the U.S. News Best Hospitals list 21 years in a row. All of this is because of you.

The extraordinary work of our clinical departments also received well-deserved recognition. Of the 16 specialties ranked by U.S. News, 15 of ours continue to be nationally ranked. Nine of our specialties are in the top five, and 11 are in the top 10.   

Please join us in congratulating these departments for their specialty rankings:

• Rheumatology - #1 
• Ear, Nose & Throat - #3
• Neurology & Neurosurgery - #3
• Ophthalmology - #3
• Psychiatry - #3
• Urology - #4
• Diabetes & Endocrinology - #5
• Gastroenterology & GI Surgery - #5
• Geriatrics - #5
• Cancer - #6
• Nephrology - #9
• Gynecology - #12
• Pulmonology - #13
• Cardiology & Heart Surgery - #16
• Orthopedics - #20

On a local level, The Johns Hopkins Hospital ranked #1 in all specialties in both Maryland and Baltimore. And we congratulate Sibley Memorial Hospital, which ranked #6 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region.
 
Some Notes on Methodology
The methodology used by U.S. News to determine hospital rankings is based on four complex measures: reputation, patient safety, outcomes and structural elements (e.g., Magnet status, technology and other resources that define the hospital environment). Here are some highlights of how the methodology affects our ranking:

• Reputation is determined by the results of a survey sent to board-certified physician specialists. To increase the number of respondents, U.S. News again partnered with Doximity, the largest online professional network of U.S. physicians, to administer the survey. This has expanded the group of physicians eligible to participate from 3,200 in 2013 to nearly 85,000 this year. The survey's language—Please name up to five U.S. hospitals that you believe provide the best care in <<specialty>> for patients who have the most challenging conditions or who need particularly difficult procedures—remained unchanged.
• The patient safety score is based on an average taken from data reported over a three-year period by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and for this year's rankings the score included data from 2011, 2012 and 2013. Continuing from 2014, U.S. News placed greater emphasis on the patient safety score but removed the indicator for postoperative hip fracture.

For a complete list of all rankings, we encourage you to visit our intranet site at insidehopkinsmedicine.org/usnews or read the special edition of Dome. For more details about the ranking methodology, please visit the U.S. News website.

Thank you for continuing Johns Hopkins' legacy of clinical excellence. It is our pleasure to work with you—some of the most gifted and compassionate caregivers imaginable.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Ronald R. Peterson
President
The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine