U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals rankings for 2024-25 are out and once again Lehigh Valley Health Network has been ranked higher than St. Luke’s University Health Network nationally and within Pennsylvania.
Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest was ranked sixth in Pennsylvania and St. Luke’s University Hospital in Fountain Hill in was ranked ninth in the state.
This year’s rankings are the first after St. Luke’s announced that it would no longer participate in the rankings or submit data or information to U.S. News and World Report amid criticisms about the publication’s methodology.
LVH-Cedar Crest was nationally ranked in two specialties: orthopedics at 20th best, up from 27th last year, and pulmonology and lung surgery at 40th, for which it was only rated as high-performing last year.
The hospital was also rated as high-performing, meaning it was in the top 10% of hospitals in the country for the following specialties:
- gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery
- geriatrics
- neurology & neurosurgery
- urology
“Providing world-class care to our community is something we have done for 125 years, and this recognition shows LVH is continually evolving to meet the needs of our community,” Dr. Brian A. Nester, president and CEO of LVHN, said in a news release. “I am so proud of the colleagues who make this incredible achievement possible and I thank them for providing nationally ranked care to the people we are here to serve.”
St. Luke’s University Hospital was not nationally ranked for any specialties but was rated as high-performing in pulmonology and lung surgery and almost made the top 10% of hospitals for neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics and geriatrics.
U.S. News also gave St. Luke’s a three out of three for charity care, whereas Cedar Crest received a two out of three. According to U.S. News, this rating represents how well hospital spending on free and discounted care for uninsured patients aligns with the proportion of the population in the community.
No other LVHN or St. Luke’s hospital was independently ranked or rated by U.S. News and World Report, but Jefferson Health-Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, operated by Jefferson Health, was ranked as the second-best hospital in the state. It was also ranked nationally for seven specialties, including ophthalmology, for which it was second. LVHN and Jefferson announced their mutual intent to merge and the possible merger is under review by regulators.
U.S. News and World Report’s best hospital rankings and the methodology it uses to determine those rankings have been the subject of criticism. The methodology, which is in part based on expert opinions, was one of the things St. Luke’s President and CEO Rick Anderson said he took exception to in a letter he sent to the publication’s leadership last year. Anderson also said that the high rankings St. Luke’s has consistently received from other notable institutions stand in contrast to U.S. News and World Report’s rankings.
Besides St. Luke’s, Penn Medicine, which has consistently seen its hospitals ranked highly by U.S. News, also announced last year it would no longer participate. Still, two Penn Medicine hospitals were ranked in the top 5 Pennsylvania hospitals this year.
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian in Philadelphia was ranked first in the state and made the honor roll of best hospitals in the nation, and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital in Lancaster was ranked fifth.
Shortly after St. Luke’s and Penn withdrew from the rankings, U.S. News & World Report announced it had altered parts of its methodology to increase the weight of objective measures and reduce the weight of expert opinions on rankings.
Around the time that St. Luke’s and Penn Medicine withdrew from the rankings, the San Francisco city attorney also took an interest in the report. The city attorney opened an investigation last year into U.S. News & World Report, its methodology and the money it receives from hospitals it ranks, and issued a subpoena for specific information related to those subjects. In response, U.S. News and World Report sued the city attorney’s office in federal court seeking an injunction against the subpoena but that suit was dismissed by a judge in May, according to Courthouse News Service.
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