Saint Joseph's Hospital Ranked by U.S. News and World Report

MARSHFIELD, WI--Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield has been ranked by US News and World Report as among America’s Best Hospitals. Each year, the magazine ranks hospitals throughout the country in various specialties. Saint Joseph’s was ranked among the top 50 hospitals for the treatment of ear, nose and throat (ENT).

Now in its 20th year, the 2009-10 America's Best Hospitals guide is the most extensive hospital ranking to-date. It includes rankings of 174 medical centers nationwide in 16 specialties--with full data available online for another 1,500 unranked hospitals.

“I am pleased that we have been recognized by another outside organization for the comprehensive and high quality care that we provide patients,” said Michael Schmidt, hospital president. “This recognition is due to the commitment and dedication of our hospital and medical staff to provide quality work, whether it be in direct patient care or support and technical services.

"When the stakes are high, you want the best care you can get for someone close to you," said Avery Comarow, health rankings editor. "These are hospitals that are used to getting the sickest patients."

In addition to the hospitals that appear in one or more specialty rankings in the print magazine, the 2009-10 America’s Best Hospitals package includes an online consumer guide where readers can find information on more than 1,500 hospitals that qualified for rankings, but did not score high enough to be ranked (fewer than one-third of the 4,861 U.S. hospitals evaluated did qualify).

Methodology

The rankings in 12 of the 16 specialties--all but ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology--are predominantly driven by hard data. There are four components: reputation, death rate, patient safety (new this year), and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services. In these 12 specialties, hospitals have to pass through several gates to be ranked and considered a Best Hospital:

1. The first gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked at all by requiring that it must meet any of three conditions: be a teaching hospital; have at least 200 beds; or have at least 100 beds plus at least four out of eight key medical technologies such as current-generation CT scanners and precision radiation therapy.

2. The second gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked in a particular specialty. To be eligible, the hospital had to either have at least a specified volume of certain procedures and conditions over three years, or had to have been nominated by at least one physician in the last three years of our annual specialist survey.

3. The third gate is whether a hospital does well enough to be ranked, based on its reputation, death rate, patient safety, and factors like nurse staffing and technology.

In the four other specialties--ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology--ranking is based solely on nominations from the three most recent physician surveys.