US News to overhaul its measures for annual Best Regional Hospital rankings

U.S. News & World Report will revamp the methodology it uses to compare hospitals for its annual Best Regional Hospital report. The new measures will limit eligibility to general acute care hospitals, factor in its new Common Care ratings, consider 12 of the 16 Best Hospital complex-care specialties, and create stricter criteria for hospitals to be considered high performing in the 12 date-driven specialties. The publication also said that if a hospital is high performing or nationally ranked but does not meet the new methodology criteria, it will not recognize it as a Best Regional Hospital. ​The hospital profile, however, will indicate that area or those areas of care in which it is ranked or high performing. U.S. News has made several changes to its methodology for all its rankings since a 2014 study criticized the publication's outsized emphasis on hospital reputations in its previous methodology, noting a weak correlation between hospital prices and reputations, and patient outcomes. Announcement