t seems like the honor roll doesn't end in eighth grade - at least for the Penn Health System.
U.S. News and World Report, known for its college ranking system, recently released its list of the nation's top health systems.
Of the 173 hospitals that were ranked, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania came in 12th, scoring it a place on an "honor roll" which consists of the top 18 hospitals in the country.
HUP's "place on the honor roll serves as general recognition of the depth and quality from which HUP serves Philadelphia and the surrounding community," said Ralph Muller, CEO of the Health System.
Unlike U.S. News' college rankings, the magazine ranks a hospital according to the number of specialties at which it excels, with the best hospitals offering better quality in more areas. The quality of a specialty is measured by both hard data - Medicare inpatient quotas, for example - and also by physician surveys.
Hospitals must also meet at least one of three standards: "membership in the Council of Teaching Hospitals, affiliation with a medical school, or availability of at least six out of 13 advanced services such as image-guided radiation therapy and robotic surgery," according to the magazine's Web site. HUP met all of these criteria.
Of the top 50 hospitals, these are ranked according to physician surveys of which hospital was the best in a certain specialty, mortality index - that is, the number of Medicare patients "with certain conditions" that died versus the number of patients that were expected to die, in addition to "other care-related factors," such as the number of patients and the availability of nurses according to the Web site.
Of its 13 specialties, Penn ranked highly in eight, giving it a total of 11 points by the survey's methodologists. Penn's highest ranked specialties were being ear, nose and throat and endocrinology, both at No. 10. In comparison, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore scored 30 points in 15 specialties, many of which came in second. Surprisingly, HUP came in 29th for cancer, 18 spots behind fellow Philadelphia-located Fox Chase Cancer Center.
With all the ongoing commotion about rankings with liberal arts college, Muller stated that he would "prefer to be [on the rankings] than not," noting that he would prefer to be ranked "by the number of patients and busyness of programs."
"The real ranking we care about," added Muller, "is that of our nurses," pointing out HUP had achieved magnet status for nurses. An award given by the American Nurses' Credentialing Center, this is given to hospitals "with excellent patient outcomes, high levels of satisfaction from nurses, and low nurse turnover rates," according The Nursing Advocacy Web site.
