America's Best Hospitals for GI Disease

U.S. News and World Report has come out with its yearly ranking of the best hospitals. To make the list, a hospital first needs to be a teaching hospital. In addition, it must have either a minimum of 200 beds, or have a minimum of 100 beds and at least four out of eight important medical technologies (examples being current-generation CT scanners and precision radiation therapies). The hospitals that meet this criteria, and 44% of American hospitals do, are then given rankings based on reputation, death rate, patient safety, and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services. Each of those criteria have their own method of ranking, which is explained here.

For Digestive Disorders, the top ranked hospitals are:

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• Cleveland Clinic
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

For many of us dealing with IBD, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic are already very well-known for being on the cutting edge of IBD research and surgery. All five of these hospitals are also included in the "Honor Roll," which are the hospitals with high scores in 6 or more of the specialty areas.