Some hospitals made their debut in U.S. News & World Report's list of best 50 hospitals for adult cancer in the past 15 years. Others hardly budged and held onto their top rankings.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked hospitals since 1990, when a comparable resource for hospital performance did not exist. The fundamental methodology for rankings was created by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. First editions were solely based on hospital reputations until 1993, when mortality, nurse staffing and other objective measures were incorporated.
Although the rankings have always focused on a patient population in need of complex and difficult care, the methodology has evolved over the years. For instance, risk-adjusted survival is now the most heavily weighted factor in each data-driven specialty at 32.5 percent, and measures such as volume, staffing and other clinical resources account for another 30 percent. Hospital reputation fell to 27.5 percent in 2014.
Ben Harder, chief of health analysis with U.S. News & World Report, has said reputation can influence the order of the top 50, but it doesn't have a significant impact in determining which hospitals actually make the top 50. "If you're in the top 50, you may move up or move down based on what your reputation is," he told Becker's last year. "But objective data will drive whether you're in the top 50."
Before 2009, mortality was the sole outcome measure in the analysis. Now the rankings factor several other patient safety indicators, including pressure ulcers and postoperative respiratory failure. In 2014, U.S. News & World Report upped the weight of the patient safety score from 5 to 10 percent of the total score. That year marked the shift of reputation weighing less, patient safety weighing more.
The below comparison of rankings from 2000 to 2015 does not provide a comprehensive picture of where hospitals ranked year over year, but it does present some interesting observations and reminders of how much has changed in 15 years.
Some things to note:
- The rankings from 2000 were calculated before U.S. News & World Report recognized National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center recognition as an indicator of hospital structure. That happened in 2002. Magnet recognition was added as an indicator of structure in 2004. ("Structure" refers to hospital resources related to patient care, such as nurse staffing, availability of certain technologies and recognition from external organizations like NCI and the American Nurse Credentialing Center.)
- The top two spots have rotated between MD Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since 1990. MD Anderson ranked No. 1 for 11 of the past 14 years.
- Some hospitals named in 2000 are no longer recognizable today, such as Clarian Health Partners in Indianapolis, which is now known as Indiana University Health or IU Health Academic Health Center. Others have expanded their names through affiliations or new clinical relationships since 2000, such as Seattle Cancer Care Alliance/University of Washington Medical Center, which in 2000 was only listed as University of Washington Medical Center.
- Some hospitals made the list in 2000 but were not ranked at all in 2015, including Cook County Hospital (now John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County) in Chicago, Summa Health System in Akron, Ohio, and University Hospital of Arkansas (or University of Arkansas Medical Sciences) in Little Rock.
Here's who held and holds the top 50 spots, then and now:
No. 1
2000: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston)
2015: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston)
No. 2
2000: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York)
2015: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York)
No. 3
2000: Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore)
2015: Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
No. 4
2000: Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
2015: Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (Boston)
No. 5
2000: Duke University Medical Center (Durham, N.C.)
2015: Seattle Cancer Care Alliance/University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle)
No. 6
2000: University of Chicago Hospitals
2015: Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore) and UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles)
No. 7
2000: Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston)
2015: N/A due to the tie for No. 6
No. 8
2000: UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles)
2015: Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston)
No. 9
2000: Roswell Park Cancer Institute (Buffalo, N.Y.)
2015: UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco)
No. 10
2000: Clarian Health Partners (Indianapolis)
2015: Stanford (Calif.) Health Care - Stanford Hospital
No. 11
2000: University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle)
2015: Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania - Penn Presbyterian (Philadelphia)
No. 12
2000: Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
2015: Cleveland Clinic
No. 13
2000: Stanford (Calif.) Health Care - Stanford Hospital
2015: City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.)
No. 14
2000: Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia)
2015: Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University (St. Louis)
No. 15
2000: University of Michigan Medical Center (Ann Arbor)
2015: University of Colorado Hospital (Aurora)
No. 16
2000: UPMC (Pittsburgh)
2015: Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago)
No. 17
2000: Cleveland Clinic
2015: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
No. 18
2000: University of Kentucky Hospital (Lexington)
2015: Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa, Fla.)
No. 19
2000: University of Virginia Health Sciences Center (Charlottesville)
2015: Mayo Clinic (Phoenix)
No. 20
2000: F.G. McGaw Hospital at Loyola University (Maywood, Ill.)
2015: NewYork-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
No. 21
2000: Allegheny General Hospital (Pittsburgh)
2015: Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia)
No. 22
2000: H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa, Fla.)
2015: Emory University Hospital (Atlanta)
No. 23
2000: University of Alabama Hospital at Birmingham
2015: UC San Diego Medical Center
No. 24
2000: Barnes Jewish Hospital (St. Louis)
2015: Ohio State University James Cancer Hospital
No. 25
2000: Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston)
2015: UPMC (Pittsburgh)
No. 26
2000: Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital (Columbus, Ohio)
2015: USC Norris Cancer Hospital-Keck Medical Center of USC (Los Angeles)
No. 27
2000: Vanderbilt University Hospital and Clinic (Nashville)
2015: Duke University Hospital (Durham, N.C.)
No. 28
2000: University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (Madison)
2015: University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers (Ann Arbor)
No. 29
2000: Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital
2015: Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia)
No. 30
2000: Fairview-University Medical Center (Minneapolis)
2015: Seidman Cancer Center at UH Case Medical (Cleveland)
No. 31
2000: Henry Ford Hospital (Detroit)
2015: University of Kansas Hospital (Kansas City)
No. 32
2000: University Hospitals of Cleveland
2015: University of North Carolina Hospitals (Chapel Hill)
No. 33
2000: University of Cincinnati Hospital
2015: Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.)
No. 34
2000: New York Presbyterian Hospital
2015: University of Chicago Medical Center
No. 35
2000: Shands Hospital at the University of Florida (Gainesville)
2015: University of California, Davis Medical Center (Sacramento)
No. 36
2000: University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics (Salt Lake City)
2015: Houston Methodist Hospital
No. 37
2000: Lutheran General Healthsystem (Park Ridge, Ill.)
2015: Oregon Health and Science University Hospital (Portland)
No. 38
2000: University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (Iowa City)
2015: University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (Madison)
No. 39
2000: North Carolina Baptist Hospital (Winston-Salem)
2015: University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (Iowa City)
No. 40
2000: University Hospital of Arkansas (Little Rock)
2015: Rush University Medical Center (Chicago)
No. 41
2000: University of North Carolina Hospitals (Chapel Hill)
2015: NYU Langone Medical Center (New York)
No. 42
2000: Cook County Hospital (Chicago)
2015: Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital
No. 43
2000: Rush-Presbyterian - St. Luke's Medical Center (Chicago)
2015: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles) and Roswell Park Cancer Institute (Buffalo, N.Y.)
No. 44
2000: Strong Memorial Hospital-Rochester (N.Y.) University
2015: N/A due to tie for No. 43
No. 45
2000: Georgetown University Hospital (Washington, D.C.)
2015: University of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore)
No. 46
2000: St. Louis University Hospital
2015: UF Health Shands Hospital (Gainesville, Fla.)
No. 47
2000: University Hospitals and Clinics (Columbia, Mo.)
2015: IU Health Academic Health Center (Indianapolis)
No. 48
2000: Providence Hospital (Southfield, Mich.)
2015: Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, Fla.)
No. 49
2000: Temple University Hospital (Philadelphia)
2015: Mount Sinai Hospital (New York)
No. 50
2000: Summa Health System (Akron, Ohio)
2015: UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas)