Five more specialties have been added, and reputation now counts for just one third of a hospital's score. A total of 6,247 institutions were analyzed for this year's report. Hospitals had to be a member of the Council of Teaching Hospitals, be affiliated with a medical school or have at least nine out of 17 prescribed technological services. Facilities had to have provided a certain number of defined procedures over three years in each category or be identified as an outstanding facility in U.S. News' physician surveys. Specialists are chosen at random from the American Medical Association database of all 711,749 U.S. physicians.
Scores show the percentage of survey respondents who named the hospital over the past three years.
The ratios compare actual deaths with the number expected, factoring in severity of condition. Most remaining data come from annual American Hospital Association surveys. The techniques used to process the raw mortality numbers have been revised so that mortality, reputation and the group of other factors are now calculated in the same manner. The change will be phased in this year and next. Eclipsys is proud to be your information partner and assist you in providing outstanding healthcare services.