How Does Marlborough's Hospital Rank? US News & World Report

MARLBOROUGH, MA—U.S. News and World Report released its annual rankings of the best hospitals in the country for 2017-18, ranking more than 4,500 medical centers in the U.S. in 25 specialties, procedures and conditions. The ranking lists the top 20 hospitals nationally, and the top 10 for Massachusetts.

The rankings also looked at the best hospitals in every state, including Massachusetts, and the 20 hospitals that made it to the honor roll, a distinction given to hospitals that deliver exceptional treatment across multiple specialties.

Other hospitals that were analyzed,including UMass Memorial-Marlborough Hospital, were graded or scored on specific specialties at the hospital, procedures and conditions and the number of doctors and their years of experience. UMass Marlborough was rated as "average" in treatment of heart failure, hip replacement and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It ranked "below average" in knee replacement and colon cancer surgery.

The methodology used by U.S. News is based largely on objective measures with more than 70 percent of the rankings relying on such data. The rankings also took into account survey answers from more than 125,000 physicians across the country about reputation. U.S. News also looked at five years of Medicare data and the number of patients treated in hospitals. The methodology was also updated to avoid penalizing hospitals for treating low-income hospitals or for accepting high-risk cases transferred from other hospitals. For the best regional hospitals, procedures and conditions rankings were emphasized more than specialty rankings.

The specialties included in the rankings are:

• Cancer
• Cardiology and Heart Surgery
• Diabetes and Endocrinology
• Ear, Nose and Throat
• Gastroenterology and GI Surgery
• Geriatrics
• Gynecology
• Nephrology
• Neurology and Neurosurgery
• Ophthalmology
• Orthopedics
• Pulmonology
• Psychiatry
• Rehabilitation
• Rheumatology
• Urology

The procedures and conditions included in the rankings are:

• COPD
• Heart Bypass Surgery
• Heart Failure
• Hip Replacement
• Knee Replacement
• Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair
• Aortic Valve Surgery
• Colon Cancer Surgery
• Lung Cancer Surgery

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