Healthgrades on Oct. 22 unveiled the recipients of its 2025 Specialty Excellence Awards, which recognize hospitals with superior clinical performance in 16 specialties, including heart surgery, critical and stroke care.
Healthgrades used Medicare data to analyze outcomes for 31 common conditions and procedures at nearly every hospital in the country. The Specially Excellence Awards reflect the top 5% or 10% of hospitals within each specialty area, as measured by lowest risk-adjusted mortality and complication z-scores. The full methodology can be found here and the full list of recipients here. Using the full list of award recipients, Healthgrades further identified the top 100 hospitals across 11 specialty care areas, and top 50 hospitals for three specialty areas.
The 16 specialties included in the excellence awards are:
Cardiac care
Cardiac surgery
Coronary intervention
Cranial neurosurgery
Critical care
Gastrointestinal care
Gastrointestinal surgery
Joint replacement
Neurosciences
Orthopedic surgery
Prostate surgery
Pulmonary care
Spine surgery
Stroke care
Surgical care
Vascular surgery