Hospital Rankings

How PlainHospital Rankings Are Compiled

Our rankings are computed directly from the upstream dataset, not editorially curated and not influenced by advertisers. Each ranking surfaces a clear, reproducible metric (for example, count of records per jurisdiction, share of records within a category, or rate per capita), and the underlying numbers are visible on the associated record pages so you can verify them. We recompute rankings whenever the upstream data refreshes, and we publish the refresh cadence on the methodology page.

What Rankings Mean (and What They Do Not)

A ranking is a useful lens, it tells you where to start looking, but it is not a judgment about quality, safety, or reputation. Being at the top of a count-based ranking typically reflects scale: more records in a jurisdiction, more entities in a category. It does not mean "better" or "worse." Whenever a ranking could be misread as a quality claim, we include an explanatory note on the page. When a ranking is rate-based (per capita, per thousand, share), we describe the denominator so you can sanity-check whether the normalization fits your question.

Why We Publish These Rankings

Rankings make large public datasets navigable. Most visitors arrive with a question ("Which jurisdiction has the most records?" or "Where is this category concentrated?") and benefit from seeing a ranked list with direct links to the full records. Publishing ranked views of public data is a long-established practice in civic journalism; we are careful to surface the raw numbers, link to the official source, and avoid editorial spin. If a ranking ever implies a value judgment not supported by the data, please email us at the address on the contact page and we will review the wording.

Methodology, Sources, and Corrections

Every ranking is derived from the source dataset linked on the methodology page. We do not blend proprietary signals; we do not substitute editor opinion for data. If you believe a ranking is miscomputed or that a record is misclassified, please contact us with the specific record ID and the expected correction, and we will investigate within the next refresh cycle. Corrections that affect the published ranking are rolled forward immediately; minor formatting fixes go out with the next scheduled refresh.

How CMS Star Ratings Drive the Rankings

The Best-Rated and Safest rankings rest on metrics CMS already publishes. The overall hospital star rating is a 1-to-5 composite that the agency computes from seven measure groups, mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experience, effectiveness of care, timeliness of care, and efficient use of medical imaging. CMS updates the calculation methodology periodically and notes those revisions in the public release notes for each refresh. PlainHospital does not recompute the composite; we display the agency-published star rating directly. When we surface a "safest" list, we rank by the count of safety-of-care measures where the facility scored "Better than the National Rate" - a published category, not a synthesized score.

Patient Experience and HCAHPS

The Best Patient Experience ranking uses HCAHPS, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey administered to a random sample of recently-discharged adult inpatients. HCAHPS publishes ten composite measures (communication with doctors, communication with nurses, responsiveness of hospital staff, communication about medicines, discharge information, care transition, cleanliness of the hospital environment, quietness of the hospital environment, overall hospital rating, and willingness to recommend). The composite "top-box" percentages are what we display. As with star ratings, we do not re-aggregate; we sort on the published numbers and link back to the source.

Maternal Care and the Birthing-Friendly Designation

The "Birthing Friendly" list surfaces hospitals that earned the CMS "Birthing Friendly" designation, which the agency awards to facilities meeting structural and process measures around maternal health. The designation is a binary recognition, not a continuous score, so this is a directory rather than a ranking: we list qualifying facilities alphabetically. A facility's presence on this list does not imply it is the safest place for any individual birth, outcomes depend heavily on case-mix, acuity, transfer protocols, and the specific clinical situation. The designation simply indicates that the facility meets the agency's published maternal-care standards.

Limits of Ranking-by-Metric

Hospital quality is multidimensional and ranking on a single metric will always trade depth for clarity. A hospital might rank highly on patient experience but middling on safety-of-care because the two measures capture different aspects of the same care episode. A hospital might rank low on readmission because it serves a sicker, more medically complex population, case-mix can distort raw rate comparisons. CMS publishes risk-adjusted versions of many measures specifically to account for this, but the adjustment is imperfect, and no risk-adjustment can fully normalize for community-level factors like access to primary care or social-support infrastructure. Treat each ranked list as a directional indicator and consult the per-facility detail pages, which carry the full set of measures, before forming a conclusion.