On August 4, U.S. News & World Report released the 2026-2027 edition of Best Hospitals. Now in its 37th year, the annual study ranks hospitals in 15 specialties and 22 procedures and conditions.

“One finding that may surprise Healthcare Innovation's readers is that, even with major changes this year to the methodology behind U.S. News & World Report's hospital rankings, the hospitals near the top of major specialty rankings such as cancer, orthopedics and heart & vascular are highly consistent from one year to the next,” Ben Harder, Chief of Health Analysis and Managing Editor with U.S. News & World Report, told Healthcare Innovation.

“Consider, for example, that performance on risk-adjusted outcome measures now accounts for 80 percent of the U.S. News ranking in cardiology, heart & vascular surgery, a major boost from 45 percent last year,” Harder stated. “And U.S. News no longer factors in any data from a survey of cardiologists' opinions about the best hospitals, which previously accounted for 12 percent of each hospital's score. Despite these and other major methodology changes, this year's top 8 heart hospitals are the same as last year's top 8.”

For this study, U.S. News analyzed each hospital’s performance based on measures such as risk-adjusted mortality rates, preventable complications and patient experience. According to a press release, this year, among other methodology refinements, risk-adjusted outcome measures played a larger and more dominant role in determining the rankings and ratings.

A total of 505 hospitals earned recognition as Best Regional Hospitals across 49 states and Washington, D.C.

These 20 medical centers, listed in alphabetical order, were ranked the best of the Best Hospitals:

• AdventHealth Orlando
• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
• Cleveland Clinic
• Hackensack University Medical Center at Hackensack Meridian Health, Hackensack, New Jersey
• Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
• Houston Methodist Hospital
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• Mayo Clinic-Arizona, Phoenix
• Mayo Clinic-Rochester, Minnesota
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City
• New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, New York City
• Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago
• NYU Langone Hospitals, New York City
• Rush University Medical Center, Chicago
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California
• UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
• UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
• University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor