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CNN Live At Daybreak
'U.S. News & World Report' Names Top Five U.S. Hospitals
Aired July 13, 2001 - 08:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: There, you're seeing it for yourself, the honor roll, the top five hospitals that "U.S. News & World Report" found to be some of the best hospitals in America. It is their annual edition on this matter. And joining us, this morning, is Richard Folkers. He's the director of media relations for "U.S. News & World Report".
Good morning, Richard.
RICHARD FOLKERS, DIRECTOR OF MEDIA RELATIONS, "U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT": Good morning.
LIN: So what makes a great hospital?
FOLKERS: Well, what makes a great hospital is that they offer a lot of technological services. They treat their patients well. They look after people, a whole lot of things that are, frankly, very hard to quantify, however, when you're looking at all of the countries in the United States.
So, what "U.S. News" has done, in this report, for the twelfth year, is to try and find a way to attach some numbers, to look at hospitals across the board when we look at every one in the U.S.
We look at number of issues that all relate to quality of care. Principle among them include: what is the hospital's professional standing? How do people in the field judge the hospital?
LIN: OK, well, those two criteria right there, for example, or I guess one, basically, doesn't that mean that a bigger hospital that gets more funding, that's usually close to a major city is always going to have the advantage then?
FOLKERS: A certain advantage, frankly, yes, that the hospitals that are the major university hospitals, the names you know, the John's Hopkins, the Mayo Clinics, they are going to perennially rise to the top. What we find though, year-in and year-out is that everyone's scores are getting better and when you look down our lists, across 17 medical specialties that there are some extraordinary hospitals and some places and some names that you might not necessarily recognize.
LIN: Richard, on that note, let me ask you a question here, one of our viewers sent in. Lee Kirtley asks: "What are the best small hospitals?" Lee lives in a small town with three hospitals. The nearest, biggest hospital is over 100 miles from Lee. What should Lee look for in choosing the best among the three in an emergency situation?
FOLKERS: Well, let's look at that a couple of ways. That, first of all, what we find every year is that this country has some extraordinary community hospitals that may not make the top 50 lists. These lists are there for the medical conditions that may come up in your life that are threatening your life, that threaten the quality of your life, if you have an especially virile form of cancer, if you have a childhood asthma that's not treatable. There are some great hospitals but these are the places to look for if you need to go to find the best and if you might need to fight with health insurance company to find the best.
The rankings are all going to be available today on our Web site at usnews.com and folks can peruse those lists. And you'll find names of a North Carolina Baptist hospital, the University of Iowa Hospital, a lot of places that are not necessarily just in the big cities.
LIN: And did you judge these hospitals based not only on the number of procedures that they do in the areas of specialty but also how successful they were? After all, it's all about surviving.
(LAUGHTER)
FOLKERS: It does help. We look at the number of discharges, which is one thing to look at, obviously. We look at the death ratios, the mortality ratio, the number of Medicare patients in those hospitals who died compared to the number that were expected or predicted to die.
LIN: Richard, as people shop around for hospitals, did you find or did "U.S. News & World Report" find a few cautionary notes, things that, boy, if you see this or they say that, don't go there?
FOLKERS: Well, not to put it so much at a negative but we do find a lot of things that you should pay attention to. As we look -- in our medical reporting week-in and week-out, it matters a lot on many procedures, how much the hospital does it. How proficient are they at doing bypass surgery? And that's a big thing to ask. How often do you do this procedure?
Bypass surgery is a case in point that it was a somewhat rare procedure a number of years ago and it's done in an awful lot of community hospitals on a very regular basis.
LIN: Good questions to ask. Thank you very much, Richard Folkers, and good information.
FOLKERS: Thank you.
LIN: And for those of you who don't get the magazine, you've got the Web site.
FOLKERS: That's right. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
