AARP launches interactive map on top-rated hospitals across America

A new interactive map listing the top-ranked hospitals in the U.S. by geographic area is available from AARP The Magazine.

Compiled by Consumers’ Checkbook, a nonprofit organization, the listing is available online on the magazine’s Web site.

Consumers’ Checkbook surveyed doctors from across the country and collected 140,000 ratings of hospitals in the doctor’s communities. Checkbook also asked the doctors whether and where they’d recommend patients seek care in other communities for extremely difficult cases of heart conditions, cancer, and other ailments.

The list will help guide patients to appropriate hospitals if they decide they need to travel outside their hometown for care, AARP said in a statement announcing the launch of the interactive map.

When asked where they were most likely to send patients with difficult cases, doctors surveyed by Consumers’ Checkbook named the following hospitals:

Heart, General

• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

• Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, Mass.

• New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, New York, N.Y.

• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.

• Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Mass.

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

• Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, Calif.

• Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston, Texas

Cancer, General

• The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas

• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y.

• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Mass.

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

• City of Hope, Duarte, Calif.

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

• Duke University Hospital, Durham, N.C.

• Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y.

Mystery Diagnoses

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.

• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

Neurosurgery

• Duke University Hospital, Durham, N.C.

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

• University of California San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, Calif.

• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio

• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

Eyes

• Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami, Miami, Fla.

• Wills Eye Institute, Philadelphia, Penn.

• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

• Wilmer Eye Institute, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

The survey is part of the research for a book from Consumers’ Checkbook called “Consumers’ Guide to Hospitals,” which uses volumes of government safety statistics and data on death and complication rates, along with survey results, to compare and rank hospitals in the country’s 53 largest metro areas.

To see the interactive map of Consumers’ Checkbook’s top 125 hospitals, visit www.aarpmagazine.org/health.

Copyright 2009, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist

Comments

[Lisa]

Thanks for the information, this is really helpful!

[Rita]

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the comment. The new AARP interactive map offers valuable information for consumers who want to research hospitals they can go to if they have a complicated surgery.

Rita

[Susan LEVINE]

Great info. I will include it on my blog 4/5/09. www.50somethinginfo.blogspot.com
Well done.

[Rita]

Hi Susan,

Thanks for your comment and visiting The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide.

I'll take a look at your blog.

Rita

[Dissertation Methodology]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!