Poll: The Effect of Nursing Quality on Hospital Rankings

The list of top-ranked hospitals for 2013 – 2014 has been released by U.S. News & World Report. For gynecology, the rundown of the top 10 is:

1. Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn)

2. Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, Mass)

3. Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, Ohio)

4. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY)

5. Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, Mass)

6. UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco, Calif)

7. Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC (Pittsburgh, Pa)

8. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Tex)

9. Florida Hospital Orlando (Orlando, Fla)

10. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian (Philadelphia, Pa)

(The complete list, if you haven’t already seen it, is available here: Top-Ranked Hospitals for Gynecology.)

There are many great hospitals staffed by talented physicians, nurses, and other clinicians that didn’t make this list. But among the top 50 hospitals that were ranked, did you notice what we noticed? (Hint: it has to do with nurses.) Interestingly, 45 of the top 50 hospitals for gynecology had Nurse Magnet recognition, and 46 of the top 50 hospitals were ranked high or highest in nursing intensity (the level of effort required by nurses to deliver care to a patient).

Admittedly, we don't completely understand how all of the data was computed to come up with these rankings, but we do know that a hospital had to treat a minimum of 25 clinically difficult patients in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to even be on the list. And in addition to evaluating nursing intensity and whether the hospital had Nurse Magnet recognition, survival and patient safety data, as well as hospital reputation, played a role.

So here’s the question (and we welcome your thoughts in the Comment section):