NYC Hospitals Score High in National Rankings by USN&WR

Ask any hospital patient what most annoys him and assuming he’s sure his doctor knows what to do the answer is likely to be, “The food” – Too hot. Too Cold. Too late. Too early. Too totally tasteless.

U.S. News & World Report wants to make sure that’s the only really worrying thing on your temporary patient menu. To do that, every year the magazine compiles a list of hospitals across the country, ranking each one on health care and patient safety. The point is to give potential patients–you–a guide to the best care in a number of specific specialties using easy-to-understand language that grades entire institutions on what they do well and what not-so-much.

In 2011, to make their ratings even more personally useful, the magazine’s editors created a whole new category for those who want to be treated close to home. It’s called Regional Hospitals, and it grades how well local institutions do in three or more of 12 key specialties. Happily, as someone living in the New York Metro area, you don’t have to travel far to meet a hospital that qualifies. For 2022-2023, we’re Number One.

NYU Langone Ranked Number 1 in Metro Area

First up, NYU Langone which US News ranks Number 1 in the Metro New York region. The strong points here are its national performance in cardiology & heart surgery, diabetes & endocrinology, gastroenterology & gastrointestinal surgery, geriatrics, neurology & neurosurgery, orthopedics and pulmonology & lung surgery. Better yet for New Yorkers, those good points may start with Tisch Hospital on First Avenue, but they also apply to five other NYU health care sites from Brooklyn to Long Island.

“This recognition is reflective of one standard of care that is consistently supported by our faculty and staff across each of our hospitals,” says Dr. Robert Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone Health and dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “While no single ranking accurately reflects the quality of care provided by any one institution,” he adds, “a collective review of the most respected rating systems allows one to assess how each institution performs.”

Nest, New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, a nine-center teaching hospital group nationally ranked #5 in 14 adult and 18 children’s specialties. According to U.S. News, the group excels at “caring for the sickest, most medically complex patients” with complaints due to heart disease and surgery, endocrinology (including diabetes), neurology & neurosurgery (think everything from motor problems to brain tumors), psychiatry, rheumatology, and urology.

Moving down or across town to Mount Sinai on Fifth Avenue, the prize performance is geriatric medicine, a specialty in which this hospital ranks Number one, not just in New York but nationwide as well. At the other end of the age spectrum, Mount Sinai’s other standout service is its Kravis Children’s Hospital which wins Mid-Atlantic Region honors in pediatrics.

Finally, Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill on Lexington Avenue, where stenting to treat cardiac blood vessels clots was invented, still leads in this life-saving service. And your family and friends will thank you for choosing to come here. The hospital’s smaller foot print makes Lenox Hill a visitor-welcoming place where you can simply run up and down the stairs rather than waiting for those elevators that never seem to move. Like other Metro hospitals noted here, Lenox Hill’s evaluation includes at least one other site, the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital.

So pick which works for you. And be well.