U.S. News & World Report is making refinements to the methodology it uses to rank hospitals and health systems, which will be reflected in the 2023 and 2024 rankings and ratings debuting on Aug. 1.
The changes come after Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine's University of Pennsylvania Health System chose to no longer participate in the yearly review.
Several of the changes apply to the rankings of the nation's top orthopedic practices and hospitals.
This year, "prevention of outpatient procedural complications" outcomes were added in this year's orthopedic rankings, as outpatient surgeries now account for a growing share of orthopedic procedures. The outcome measures were winsorized in their 99th percentile values, meaning data points above that will be set at the 99 percentile value, according to a July 3 press release from U.S. News.
Additionally, metastatic cancer cases were excluded from orthopedics to improve the homogeneity of the orthopedics cohort.
HCAHPS scores for orthopedic hospitals and surgical hospitals have been algorithmically adjusted to be more comparable to scores observed across all general acute-care hospitals.
U.S. News is also considering the addition of volume of procedures performed in the outpatient settings for the orthopedic rankings.