AARP The Magazine Unveils Top-Ranked Hospitals Across the Country

March 24, 2009

Contact: Michelle Alvarez, AARP, 202-434-2560, malvarez@aarp.org

WASHINGTON — AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world’s largest-circulation magazine with more than 34 million readers, today debuted a new interactive map listing the top-ranked hospitals in the U.S. by geographic area. This list (available at www.aarpmagazine.org/health) was compiled by Consumers’ Checkbook, a nonprofit organization, and coincides with the release of the May/June issue of AARP The Magazine, which features new information and advice for consumers deciding whether or not to travel away from home for medical care. The magazine article also features the results of a national survey in which doctors were asked to give their top picks for out-of-town hospitals based on specialty. With several of the largest U.S. hospitals reporting significant increases in the number of out-of-state patients in the past decade, it’s clear that more patients are venturing further from home for care.

Consumers’ Checkbook surveyed doctors from across the country and collected 140,000 ratings of hospitals in their own communities and also asked the doctors whether, and where, they would recommend patients seek care in other communities for extremely difficult cases of heart conditions, cancer, and other ailments. The resulting list will help guide patients to appropriate hospitals if they decide they need to travel outside their hometown for care. When asked where they were most likely to send patients with extremely difficult cases, doctors surveyed by Consumers’ Checkbook named the following hospitals:

Heart, General

• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
• Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA
• New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, New York, NY
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD
• Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA
• Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston, TX

Cancer, General

• The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
• City of Hope, Duarte, CA
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD
• Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC
• Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY

Mystery Diagnoses

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

Neurosurgery

• Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
• University of California San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

Eyes