U.S. News & World Report has updated the methodology for its 2025 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care ranking, set for release Dec. 10.
Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis, and Jennifer Winston, PhD, health data scientist for U.S. News, outlined changes to the scoring methodology for both Best Hospitals for Maternity Care and the related Maternity Care Access Hospital designation.
Below are six of the changes made, with previous changes to the survey used for the ranking detailed and listed here.
1. Early elective deliveries. U.S. News has removed early elective deliveries from the scoring methodology for Best Hospitals for Maternity Care and Maternity Care Access Hospital designation.
2. Less weight on breast milk feeding. U.S. News decreased the weight of the exclusive breast milk feeding metric from 20% to 15% for Best Hospitals for Maternity Care. It also removed the exclusive breast milk feeding metric from the scoring of Maternity Care Access Hospitals.
3. Additional avenues for hospitals to demonstrate their commitment to breast milk feeding. For Best Hospitals for Maternity Care, hospitals that had been designated as "Baby-Friendly" by Baby-Friendly USA received full credit on the breast milk feeding metric.
U.S. News also gave hospitals a normalized score of 70% credit on the breast milk feeding metric for implementing the 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding program. Hospitals not implementing the 10-step program were assigned a score based on their exclusive breast milk feeding rates. All hospitals were invited to provide data on their breast milk feeding rates for display on the U.S. News website. Hospitals that did not provide this data were not penalized.
4. U.S. News used the severe unexpected newborn complications metric in its scoring methodology, instead of the prior overall unexpected complications metric. For the severe unexpected newborn complications metric, the media company used 95% confidence intervals to assign hospitals to five performance bands. Hospitals must score in the three highest bands to be eligible for High Performing designation.
5. More weight on racial and ethnic disparities. U.S. News increased the weight of the reporting on racial and ethnic disparities measure from 5% to 10%.
6. More weight on birthing-friendly practices measure. U.S. News increased the weight of the birthing-friendly practices measure from 5% to 10%.