UW Hospital and Clinics ranked among top hospitals in country

The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics has been ranked among the top hospitals in the country once more by U.S. News & World Report.

Based on top-50 scores in nine areas of medical treatment, the hospital has also been recognized as the best in the state. These scores come from U.S. News & World Report’s 2017-18 Best Hospitals guide.

UW Hospital and Clinics is part of the UW Health system, which includes American Family Children’s Hospital, UnityPoint Health-Meriter, the Carbone Cancer Center and other groups.

The two top specialties for UW Hospitals and Clinics were urology and gynecology.

It was ranked 13 for gynecology, putting it in the top 1 percent of U.S. hospitals for this area of treatment, according to UW Health. For urology, it was ranked 16.

Seven other specialties were ranked in the top 50 out of more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide: cancer, gastroenterology and GI surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, geriatrics, pulmonology, and nephrology, the study of the kidney.

“As we embark on a new strategic plan that will move us to even higher levels of performance, we are deeply honored to once again perform extremely well in the US News rankings,” said UW Health CEO Alan Kaplan.

Lisa Brunette, director of media relations at UW Hospitals and Clinics, says this strategic plan has been in the works for the past year, and more details will be announced soon.

Kaplan also said no single measurement can give a perfect understanding of how good a hospital is, or how the experience is for the patients, “so we pay attention to many other measures as well.”

Out of all the hospitals in the country, only 152 were ranked in at least one medical area. There are 16 categories in total which U.S. News & World Report uses for its assessment; twelve are determined from information patient safety and survival, staffing, and a physician survey. For the other four — psychiatry, ophthalmology, rheumatology and rehabilitation — scoring is done by reputation alone.

Data for these rankings come from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database, which records data on patient volume and nurse-to-patient ratio, as well as trauma care and advanced technologies.

For the UW Hospitals and Clinics ranking in gynecology it received an 81.4 out of 100. By comparison, Mayo Clinic in Rochester got a perfect score, and only the next three top hospitals got above a 90.

For urology, a 76 out of 100 was good enough to nab the 16 ranking. Cleveland Clinic received a perfect score for this category, followed by Mayo Clinic with 99.5.

–By Alex Moe
WisBusiness.com