Quality Of Health Care

One way to measure the quality of health care is to focus on hospital performance and ratings. "U.S. News & World Report" has a list of the best hospitals for 2010-2011, based on criteria they chose.

Criteria

• "U.S. News" ranked the best hospitals in 16 adult health specialties. Some 4,852 hospitals with more than 9,000 specialists were included in the evaluation. In 12 of the 16 specialties, quality of care is vital for patient survival. Therefore, death rates and patient safety were a large part of each hospital's score for the 12 specialties, along with factors such as nursing and patient services.

Specialty Rankings

• According to "U.S. News," the top hospital for cancer treatment was the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. For heart surgery, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio was ranked the highest. The top ranking for diabetes care was the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,

Honor Roll

• The "U.S. News" Honor Roll ranked the top 14 hospitals in the nation. The top three were Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.