Relativity, Rank, and the US News Health's Cardiology, Heart, and Vascular Surgery Best Hospitals.

Objective: Virtually anything can be ranked; the (USNWR or US News) ranks the top 50 hospitals specializing in cardiology, heart, and vascular surgery. Here the authors propose validating the effectiveness of rankings by comparing differences among the USNWR metrics across the top 50 hospitals.

Methods: The ranking system for the top 50 hospitals specializing in cardiology, heart, and vascular surgery was derived from 16 variant scores. Each hospital's scores were collected from the USNWR. Hospitals were categorized into quintiles consisting of 10 institutions (1-10, 11-20, etc). An analysis of variance/χ comprehensive statistical analysis was run alongside a Wilcoxon/Kruskal-Wallis test to compare statistical outcomes. A significant threshold was deemed to be < 0.05.

Results: Significant differences were noted between quintiles for advanced technologies ( = 0.05), US News specialty score ( < 0.001), number of patient referrals ( = 0.004), and expert opinion ( < 0.001). Non-statistically significant differences were found among patient experience, public transparency, Society of Thoracic Surgery transparency, American College of Cardiology transparency, recognition as a magnet hospital, and nursing staffing. Interestingly, a large variance was noted in the average number of referrals between the first quintile (13,371) and the last (6690).

Conclusions: Expert opinion plays a critical role in the reputation of the USNWR's top 10 hospitals in cardiology, heart, and vascular surgery. Although many have argued about the merits of USNWR hospital rankings, taken together, rankings fill a strong customer demand and are sticky.