These Boston hospitals were ranked best in the nation by US News & World Report – The Boston Globe

“A recent survey of US News users revealed more than four in five (84%) consider a hospital’s quality metrics to be important factors when deciding where to seek treatment for a serious medical issue,” Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at US News, said in a statement.

In June, Boston Children’s Hospital was named the second highest-ranking pediatric hospital in the country, and it also ranked among the nation’s best in several individual pediatric specialties.

Unlike previous years, the top hospitals were not ranked in order, meaning neither MGH nor Brigham and Women’s received a specific spot. US News said it made the change because all the hospitals on the list “have attained the highest standard of care in the nation” and the previous format obscured that fact.

Other top-rated hospitals include Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

In certain specialties, MGH ranked second in psychiatry and fourth in ophthalmology, while Brigham and Women’s ranked first in obstetrics and gynecology and fifth in both cancer treatment and rheumatology. McLean Hospital in Belmont ranked first for psychiatry and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown ranked second for rehabilitation.

This year’s list of US News & World Report’s best hospitals (in alphabetical order):

• Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Saint Louis
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
• Cleveland Clinic
• Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
• Houston Methodist Hospital
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
• New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell
• North Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health, Manhasset, NY
• Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago
• NYU Langone Hospitals, New York
• Rush University Medical Center, Chicago
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Stanford, Calif.
• UC San Diego Health-LaJolla and Hillcrest Hospitals, San Diego
• UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
• UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
• University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor
• UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
• Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn.

The hospital rankings have been published by US News for more than three decades, with the goal of providing patients with information based on data. The rankings are broken into two categories: specialties and procedure and conditions. Specialty rankings apply to patients who require a hospital that excels in treating complex cases, while the latter focuses on more common procedures and conditions such as hip replacement and heart failure.

As with the rankings for children’s hospitals, the methodology was refined to include factors such as outpatient outcomes in both specialty rankings and surgical ratings.

For the current list, 164 of more than 4,500 evaluated hospitals were ranked in at least one of the 15 specialties, which include geriatrics, urology, and orthopedics. Twelve of the specialty areas are derived from data sources like Medicare, while the remaining three — ophthalmology, psychiatry, and rheumatology — are determined entirely by expert opinion.

Hospitals received an overall score from 0 to 100 for specialties based on factors such as patient outcomes and experience, and expert opinion. Those with the 50 highest scores in each specialty were ranked. Hospitals that did not make the cut but were in the top 10 percent of all rated hospitals were designated “high performing.”

The rankings include the best regional hospitals — those that ranked in at least one specialty or that earned at least seven high-performing ratings (and few or no low-performing) across the procedures and conditions that were evaluated, such as heart bypass surgery.

US News said the highest-ranking hospitals might not always be the best choice for patients as they evaluate care options. For example, hospitals are evaluated across a wide range of conditions and procedures, and while they might rank lower for one, they might perform well in another. As a result, US News said the rankings should be considered a starting point.

Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.