10 Best Hospitals in North Carolina: US News & World Report

CHARLOTTE, NC -- When it comes to selecting hospital care, North Carolinians have plenty of solid options close to home, according to new rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

In a listing of more than 4,500 medical centers in the U.S. in 25 specialties, four facilities in North Carolina were ranked on a national level in multiple specialties, according to U.S. News’s annual rankings of the best hospitals in the country for 2017-18.

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

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, topped the honor roll for the second consecutive year. The hospital was ranked across 15 specialties and ranked in the top five for 13 of the specialties. Cleveland Clinic was ranked number two and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore climbed up the rankings one spot this year to number three on the honor roll.

U.S. News ranked 152 hospitals nationally in at least one specialty and 535 hospitals were recognized as best regional hospitals for those seeking care close to home. (Sign up for our free daily newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Charlotte Patch. iPhone users can download the Patch app in the App Store. Plus, like Charlotte Patch on Facebook.)

In North Carolina, Duke University Hospital ranked as the number one hospital in the state and was ranked across 13 adult and 10 pediatric specialties, and was also recognized as being high performing in nine specialties.

Three other hospitals in North Carolina were ranked nationally across specialties. You can find the entire list of North Carolina hospital rankings here.

According to the rankings, the 10 best hospitals in North Carolina are:

• Duke University Hospital (1)
• Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (2)
• University of North Carolina Hospitals (3)
• Carolinas Medical Center (4)
• Vidant Medical Center (5)
• Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital (6)
• Mission Hospital (7)
• UNC Rex Hospital (8)
• Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center (9)
• Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center (10)

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 patients 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 hospitals on U.S. News’ honor roll are:

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
• University of Michigan Hospital and Health Centers, Ann Arbor
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
• New-York Presbyterian Hospital, New York
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California
• Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
• Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri
• Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago
• UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside, Pittsburgh
• University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora
• Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, Philadelphia
• Duke University Hospital, Durham, North Carolina
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
• NYU Langone Medical Center, New York
• Mayo Clinic Phoenix, Phoenix

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

Patch Editor Deb Belt contributed to this report.

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