U.S. News & World Reports to Increase Role of Patient Safety in Hospital Rankings


U.S. News & World Reports will increase the importance of patient safety in the methodology it uses to score hospitals for the publication’s annual Best Hospitals list. At the same time, the weight given to “reputation” in the scoring will decrease.

The weight given to patient safety indicators in 12 specialties will double from 5 percent of each hospital’s overall score to 10 percent for the 2014 list. The weight given to reputation will decrease from 32.5 to 27.5 percent. Some safety experts commented that patient safety deserves more consideration than 10 percent in the scoring. Their comments can be seen on post to the Second Opinion blog on the U.S. News & World Reports website.

U.S. News & World Reports also announced that it may add another measure related to patient safety to the scoring system: “We are also considering giving credit to hospitals that regularly conduct patient safety culture surveys, which measure how well the organizational culture supports efforts to improve patient safety.”