A new edition of U.S. News & World Report’s influential “Best Hospitals” rankings dropped Tuesday, this time further highlighting top performers at the regional level and more heavily weighing patient outcomes in the placements.
The 2026-2027 accolades name 505 hospitals as the best in their regions. Building on last year’s more localized focus, the publication has also added regional-level specialty rankings for patients seeking nearby cancer, orthopedics, rehabilitation and cariology/heart and vascular surgery care.
“Because most patients choose providers close to home, this year’s debut of regional specialty rankings … gives them an easy new way to evaluate their local options in consultation with their medical providers,” Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at U.S. News, said in a statement. “U.S. News’ performance-driven metrics ensure American families can confidently find and choose high-quality care, often right in their own communities.”
Additionally, 73 hospitals were recognized as the top of their class for community access. Per U.S. News, the mantle is given to those “with a demonstrated track record of providing high-quality care to a patient population that includes underserved and vulnerable groups in their local communities.”
Foremost among the year’s methodology change is the greater role of risk-adjusted outcome measures across all specialties, though the publication noted that the cardiology/heart and vascular surgery specialty saw the most adjustments with the outright elimination of expert opinion via physician survey. Some structure measures like nurse staffing and intensivist staffing were retired, and decreased weight was placed on volume.
All told, the rankings evaluated almost 4,500 hospitals across 14 specialties and 23 procedures and conditions. Of those, 16% earned some form of “Best Hospitals” designation, and 178 received at least one top-50 national ranking.
And of course, the annual rankings named 20 hospitals to the “Best Hospitals Honor Roll,” a non-ordinal list of those that “have excelled across multiple areas of care.” These hospitals earned the most points in U.S. News’ grading methodology—307 or more out of a possible 556, this time around.
New to the Honor Role are Mayo Clinic’s Florida medical center and UC San Diego Health-La Jolla, Hillcrest, & East Campus Medical Centers.
Falling off the list from last year’s honorees were AdventHealth Orlando, in Florida, and Hackensack University Medical Center at Hackensack Meridian Health, in New Jersey.
The full list of these Honor Roll hospitals is as follows:
- Brigham and Women's Hospital
- Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
- Cleveland Clinic
- Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
- Houston Methodist Hospital
- Johns Hopkins Hospital
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- Mayo Clinic-Arizona
- Mayo Clinic-Florida
- Mayo Clinic (Rochester)
- Mount Sinai Hospital
- NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell
- Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital
- NYU Langone Hospitals
- Rush University Medical Center
- Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital
- UC San Diego Health-La Jolla, Hillcrest, & East Campus Medical Centers
- UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center
- UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center
- University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor