US News & World Report released the 25th edition of the annual Best Hospitals rankings. Best Hospitals includes key information on nearly 5,000 medical centers nationwide. For the first time, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, claimed the No 1 spot on the Honor Roll, followed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is No 1 in cancer and the Cleveland Clinic is 1st in cardiology & heart surgery.

The Best Hospitals rankings are intended to help patients with life-threatening or rare conditions identify hospitals that excel in treating the most difficult cases. Hospitals are ranked nationally in 16 specialties including cancer, orthopedics, and neurology & neurosurgery. For patients seeking care locally, the US News Best Regional Hospitals highlights high-performing hospitals by state, region and metro area.

In the 2014-15 rankings, only 144 US hospitals performed well enough to be nationally ranked in one or more specialties. Another 608 were regional high performers. Just 17 qualified for a spot on the Honor Roll, ranking at or near the top in six or more specialties.

  1. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
  2. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
  3. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
  4. Cleveland Clinic
  5. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
  6. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, New York
  7. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
  8. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
  9. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
  10. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago

For the category of pulmonology, the top 5 were:

  1. Mayo Clinic
  2. National Jewish Health, Denver-University of Colorado Hospital
  3. Cleveland Clinic
  4. Massachusetts General Hospital
  5. Duke University Hospital

US News made several changes to the Best Hospitals rankings methodology this year, including adding new data and greater emphasis on patient safety. Patient safety metrics now account for 10 percent of each hospital’s overall score, in most specialties – twice as much as in past years. The role of hospital reputation, as determined through a national survey of medical specialists, diminished by 5 percentage points.

“US News strives to provide patients and their families with the most comprehensive data available on hospitals,” said Avery Comarow, US News health rankings editor. “With an estimated 400,000 deaths occurring in hospitals each year from medical errors, measuring safety performance is critical to understanding how well a hospital cares for its patients.”

Risk-adjusted survival rates, adequacy of nurse staffing and patient volume are among the array of data points on each ranked hospital that are freely available at www.usnews.com/best-hospitals.