2 Bucks County Hospitals Tie On Best In State List

U.S. News & World Report released its annual rankings of the best hospitals in the country for 2017-18, and two Bucks County hospitals tied for the same slot in Pennsylvania.

Doylestown Hospital and St. Mary Medical Center were both ranked 23rd on the list of the best hospitals in Pennsylvania.

To put together the rankings, U.S. News assessed more than 4,500 medical centers in the U.S. in 25 specialties, procedures and conditions. The rankings looked at the best hospitals in every state.

The highest-graded category for Doylestown Hospital was pulmonology. U.S. News gave it a 41.1/100 in that category. The lowest-graded category for Doylestown Hospital was cancer (18.2/100).

See Doylestown Hospital's full scorecard here.

The highest-graded category for St. Mary Medical Center was nephrology. U.S. News gave St. Mary a 42.2/100 in that category. The lowest-graded category for St. Mary was gynecology, for which it received a 7.4/100.

See St. Mary's full scorecard here.

The methodology used by U.S. News to come up with the best in state rankings 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.

In Pennsylvania, Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian was ranked as the number one hospital in the state.

According to the rankings, the best hospitals in Pennsylvania are:

1 - Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian
2 - UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside
3 - Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals
4 - Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
5 - Lehigh Valley Hospital
6 - Lancaster General Hospital
7 - Lankenau Medical Center
8 - Reading Hospital
9 - Penn Medicine Chester County Hospital (tied for 9th)
9 - St. Luke's University Hospital-Bethlehem Campus (tied for 9th)
9 - UPMC Hamot (tied for 9th)
12 - Bryn Mawr Hospital (tied for 12th)
12 - PinnacleHealth Hospitals (tied for 12th)
14 - Pennsylvania Hospital
15 - Geisinger Medical Center (tied for 15th)
15 - Paoli Hospital (tied for 15th)
15 - Riddle Hospital (tied for 15th)
18 - Abington Hospital-Jefferson Health (tied for 18th)
18 - Allegheny General Hospital (tied for 18th)
18 - Hahnemann University Hospital (tied for 18th)
18 - Temple University Hospital (tied for 18th)
18 - UPMC St. Margaret (tied for 18th)
23- Doylestown Hospital (tied for 23rd)
23 - Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital (tied for 23rd)
23 - Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg (tied for 23rd)
23 - St. Mary Medical Center (tied for 23rd)
23 - WellSpan York Hospital (tied for 23rd)

To compile the rankings, 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.