UCLA Health hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica placed #1 in both Los Angeles and California and #4 nationally in annual rankings published today by U.S. News & World Report.
For 31 consecutive years, UCLA has appeared on the national honor roll, a distinction reserved for only 20 hospitals that provide the highest quality care across an array of specialties, procedures and conditions.
"Every day, I am inspired by the teamwork of our physicians, nurses, health care professionals and support staff whose knowledge, skill, dedication and compassion make possible the excellence in health care," said Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Hospital System. "I am incredibly proud of the work that our team members do each and every day to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families."
U.S. News evaluated the performance of more than 4,500 medical centers in 16 specialties and 10 procedures and conditions. To earn a spot on the honor roll, hospitals must earn high scores across many of these areas of care.
UCLA Health earned top 10 rankings in 13 specialties, up from 12 last year: geriatrics (3), nephrology (3), diabetes and endocrinology (4), gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery (5), ophthalmology (5), pulmonology and lung surgery (5), cardiology and heart surgery (7), orthopaedics (7), psychiatry (7), ear, nose and throat (8), neurology and neurosurgery (8), urology (8) and rheumatology (9).
"We pride ourselves on providing the best possible care to each patient, no matter the circumstances — from routine checkups in our community clinics to complex procedures in our hospitals," said John Mazziotta, MD, PhD, vice chancellor for UCLA Health Sciences and CEO of UCLA Health. "I salute the dedication and teamwork of everyone in the UCLA Health system and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA."
U.S. News' methodologies in most areas of care are based largely on objective measures such as risk-adjusted survival, discharge-to-home rates, patient volume and the quality of nursing, among other care-related indicators.
"The hospitals that rise to the top of our rankings and ratings have deep medical expertise, and each has built a track record of delivering good outcomes for patients," said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News.
In a separate assessment, Newsweek recently ranked Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center among the best hospitals in the world.
UCLA Health comprises four hospitals on two campuses — Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital on the university's main campus in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, and UCLA Health - Santa Monica Medical Center — and more than 200 medical practices throughout Southern California. It also includes the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
