Among the thousands of acute care hospitals reviewed by the Lown Institute since 2020 for its Hospitals Index for Social Responsibility, just four have been named to its honor roll every time—including the facility ranked as this year’s most socially responsible hospital.
That hospital is Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, a 283-bed hospital that’s part of the nine-hospital Tennessee system Covenant Health that was also ranked as the seventh most socially responsible health system in 2026.
The three other five-peats that again made the thinktank’s list of acute care hospitals with top marks across more than 50 equity, value and outcomes were Baystate Wing Hospital, part of Massachusetts’ Baystate Health (ranked 21 overall); and two other Covenant Health hospitals, Covenant Health Fort Loudon (ranked 24 overall)) and Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (ranked 38 overall).
In total, the Lown Institute recognized 123 acute care hospitals among 2,718 that received “A” grades across the board with honor roll designations. Following Methodist Medical Center on this year’s ranked list were Stillwater Medical Center in Oklahoma, University Health in Texas, Saint Francis Hospital Muskogee in Oklahoma and Adventist Health Portland in Oregon.
The organization builds its index using publicly available data from Medicare and Medicare Advantage claims, CMS datasets, annual IRS nonprofit filings and other sources. It gauged social responsibility by looking at acute care hospitals’ performance within the major categories of equity (weighted for 20% pay equity, 40% inclusivity and 40% community benefit), value of care (40% avoiding overuse and 60% cost efficiency) and patient outcomes (62.5% clinical outcomes, 25% patient safety and 12.5% patient satisfaction).
“With financial pressures forcing painful choices on many hospitals, those on the Lown Honor Roll have found ways to put their patients and communities first,” Vikas Saini, M.D., president of the Lown Institute, said in a release. “These hospitals are staying true to their mission when it matters most, and in healthcare, that's everything."
The Lown Institute also breaks out its honor roll to recognize 37 out of 900 critical access hospitals that also secured straight “A” grades. Chief among these were Platte County Memorial Hospital in Wyoming, Baylor Scott & White Hospital Brenham in Texas and Western Wisconsin Health in Wisconsin.
And, at the health system level, just 11 out of 311 were named to the 2026 honor roll. These included, in descending order, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Temple Health, Lee Health, Nebraska Medicine and St. Lukes University Health Network.
Among individual states, the thinktank highlighted Pennsylvania, Texas, California and New Jersey has housing the most honor roll hospitals—12, 11, nine and nine, respectively. Fourteen states did not have any honor roll hospitals.
Similar to prior years, the Lown Institute contrasted placements on its social responsibility list against those named to U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals ranking, which does also include measures of equity in its methodology. U.S. News recognizes 20 hospitals on its non-ordinal honor roll.
This time around only two hospitals earned spots on both honor rolls: the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Mount Sinai Hospital. Others generally received “A’s” and “B’s” on Lown’s outcomes and value composites, but in some cases received “C’s” and “D’s” for the equity measure.