UC San Diego Health System Retains No. 1 Ranking

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UC San Diego Health System ranks among the nation’s best, according to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2014-15 issue of “America’s Best Hospitals.”

UC San Diego Health System remains among the nation’s best, according to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2014-15 issue of “America’s Best Hospitals,” released this week. The magazine’s widely cited findings again placed UC San Diego Health System first in the San Diego metropolitan area and fifth in California, with national rankings in 11 specialties, up from 10 last year. This is comparable to the country’s most prestigious health care institutions.

“These rankings are a reaffirmation of our standing as the top health system locally and one of the premier, high performing health systems nationally,” said Paul Viviano, CEO, UC San Diego Health System. “This recognition is further evidence of our tireless dedication to our mission to provide the best possible patient care by tapping an extraordinarily talented group of physicians, nurses and staff and the discovery-driven resources of the region’s only academic health system. Our goal, first and foremost, is to provide unrivalled care that is personalized to the needs of each and every patient.”

For 2014-15, U.S. News & World Report evaluated hospitals in 16 adult specialties and ranked the top 50 in most of the specialties. Just 3 percent of the nearly 5,000 hospitals that were analyzed for Best Hospitals 2014-15 earned national ranking in even one specialty.

UC San Diego Health System ranked in 11 specialties, up from 10 last year:  Cancer (#25 in the country in this specialty, up from #42 in 2013-14), Cardiology and Heart Surgery (#23, up from #42), Ear, Nose & Throat (#22, up from #48), Geriatrics (#19, up from #20), Nephrology/kidney (#15, up from #17), Neurology and Neurosurgery (#25, up from #42), Urology (#16, up from #22), Pulmonology (#6, up from #9), Diabetes & Endocrinology (#32), Gastroenterology & GI Surgery (#31), and Orthopedics (#44). In addition, Gynecology and Rheumatology were ranked “high-performing.”

“The data tell the story: a hospital that emerged from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of,” said U.S. News & World Report Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow. “A Best Hospital has demonstrated its expertise in treating the most challenging patients.”

In academic medical centers such as UC San Diego Health System, physicians and scientists who teach medicine and conduct groundbreaking research work together to bring the latest diagnostics, treatments, clinical trials and life-saving care to patients. The doctors of UC San Diego Health System are also faculty of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, which is ranked 14th in the country in research-intensive programs among 128 medical schools in U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools, 2015 Edition.”

U.S. News & World Report publishes Best Hospitals to help guide patients who need a high level of care because they face a particularly difficult surgery, a challenging condition or extra risk because of age or multiple health problems. Objective measures such as patient survival and safety data, adequacy of nurse staffing levels and other data largely determined the rankings in most specialties.

The specialty rankings and data were produced for U.S. News by RTI International, a leading research organization based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Using the same data, U.S. News & World Report produced the state and metro rankings.

In 2016, UC San Diego Health System will open Jacobs Medical Center, the largest new hospital project in southern California. The 10-story, 509,500-square-foot expansion of UC San Diego Health System’s La Jolla campus will contain three specialty hospitals: the Pauline and Stanley Foster Hospital for Cancer Care, the Hospital for Advanced Surgery and the Hospital for Women and Infants.

Earlier this year, UC San Diego Health System received Healthgrades’ “Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence,” an honor only bestowed upon the top 5 percent of hospitals in the United States. Top performing hospitals were selected based on clinical excellence across a broad spectrum of care in specialty areas, such as cardiac surgery, gastrointestinal, neurosurgery, pulmonary and critical care.

Last year, the Health System was again named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals by Truven Health Analytics. It received its third “A” rating from The Leapfrog Group’s “Hospital Safety Score,” which represents overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings are freely available here and will appear in the U.S. News “Best Hospitals 2015” guidebook, available in August.