US News ranks UCD Medical Center as 6th best California hospital, tops in Sacramento area
U.S. News & World Report ranked UC Davis Medical Center as the best hospital in the Sacramento region and sixth overall in the state of California in its 2022 evaluation of more than 4,400 institutions nationwide.
“UC Davis Medical Center continues to be a national leader, utilizing the most innovative advances in medicine to achieve the best possible outcomes for our patients,” said David Lubarsky, CEO of UC Davis Health. “This recognition is due to the expertise and dedication of every member of our health system, who work tirelessly to provide patient-centered care every day ... while we train the next generation of health professionals and scientists to treat the patients of tomorrow.”
Last year, Sacramento-based UC Davis also topped the local list but had tied for seventh place in the 2021 state ranking.
“For patients considering their options for where to get care, the Best Hospitals rankings are designed to help them and their medical professionals identify hospitals that excel in the kind of care they may need,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at U.S. News.
The magazine evaluates hospitals on the quality of care they provide in 15 specialties such as cancer and psychiatry and how successful they have been at caring for patients with 20 different procedures or conditions from colon cancer surgery to hip replacement.
Only five Sacramento-area hospitals met the U.S. News criteria to be ranked among the region’s best hospitals. Listed in order, they are UCD Medical Center; Sacramento’s Mercy General Hospital; Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center; Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento; and Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center.
To earn a spot in this group, the hospitals had to earn a “high performing” designation in at least seven of the 20 procedures or conditions that U.S. News evaluated.
The majority of local hospitals — Kaiser Permanente Sacramento Medical Center on Morse Avenue, Placerville’s Marshall Hospital, Mercy Hospital of Folsom, Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, Methodist Hospital of Sacramento, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital, Sutter Davis Hospital, Sutter Roseville Medical Center and Woodland Memorial Hospital — did not receive enough “high performing” marks to make the cut.
The magazine’s editors also expanded their evaluation of health equity measures, something that has come under greater scrutiny since disproportionate numbers of people of color died amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This information shows how well Black patients fared, compared with white patients, after having procedures such as knee replacements, heart bypasses or back surgeries. They also show whether the hospitals’ patient populations were representative of the racial or ethnic make-up of the community surrounding it.
For many procedures at all five local hospitals, African Americans were re-admitted for care at higher rates than were white patients. There was at least one bright spot: Black patients who had heart bypass surgery at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, had nearly the same rate of re-admissions as their white counterparts.
When it comes to health equity, the local hospitals were not much different from California hospitals that ranked among the top 20 hospitals in the nation on the U.S. News list. Among this elite group of California hospitals, only 10th-ranked Stanford Hospital stood out when it came to performance on health equity measures. Patients of color at the Palo Alto-based hospital were represented in proportion to or higher than their representation in the surrounding community for three different groups: Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and non-white patients overall.
Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles ranked second in the nation, behind Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn. New York University’s Langone Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic rounded out the top four. UCLA Medical Center tied in fifth place with Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital. The University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center, came in 12th.
“Patients rely on us to provide world-class care when they have complex medical needs,” said Suresh Gunasekaran, president and chief executive officer of UCSF Health. “We are honored to be recognized for the superb and compassionate care our teams provide every day for patients with the greatest medical challenges, including the most vulnerable members of our community.”
Locally, UC Davis Medical Center was the only hospital to have specialty medicine teams that were ranked nationally. Just as in 2021, it ranked in nine specialties: 21 in obstetrics and gynecology; 23 in geriatrics; 26 in diabetes and endocrinology; 27 in pulmonology and lung surgery; 32 in cardiology and heart surgery; 36 in neurology and neurosurgery; 37 in ear, nose and throat; 39 in cancer; and 50 in orthopedics.
Two other specialty medicine teams at the academic hospital — urology and gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery — also earned the “high performing” designation.
The magazine also assesses how well hospitals have done when it comes to performing certain procedures or treating certain conditions. Last year, there were 17 such conditions and procedures listed. The editors added three others this year: ovarian cancer surgery, prostate cancer surgery and uterine cancer surgery.
Hospitals could receive marks of high performing, average or not rated, and the list below identifies the procedures and conditions in which Sacramento-area hospitals ranked as high performing.
UC Davis: back surgery, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colon cancer surgery, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, lung cancer surgery, ovarian cancer surgery, pneumonia, prostate cancer surgery, stroke and transcatheter aortic valve replacement.
Mercy General: aortic valve surgery, back surgery (spinal fusion), colon cancer surgery, COPD, diabetes, heart attack, heart bypass surgery, heart failure, hip fracture, kidney failure, pneumonia, stroke, transcatheter aortic valve replacement and uterine cancer surgery.
Kaiser Roseville: colon cancer surgery, COPD, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure, hip replacement, kidney failure, pneumonia and stroke.
Sutter Sacramento: aortic valve surgery, heart attack, heart bypass surgery, heart failure, hip fracture, hip replacement surgery, prostate cancer surgery and stroke.
Kaiser South Sacramento: COPD, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, lung cancer surgery, pneumonia and stroke.
All but one of the top five regional hospitals were rated as average in performing abdominal aortic aneurysm repairs and knee replacements. The remaining hospital, Kaiser Roseville, was not rated in these two procedures.
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
