University Health Care, LDS Hospital praised

U.S. News has listed two Utah hospitals among the best hospitals in its annual survey.

LDS Hospital was cited for its excellence in urology treatment (No. 29), gastro/intestinal care (No 32), orthopedics care (No. 44), and kidney disease care (No. 45).

University Health Care was named one of the best for the 15th time, this time with honors for gynecology (No. 21) and cancer (Huntsman Cancer Hospital was No. 40).

The annual rankings look at 16 medical specialties to list the top 50 hospitals in each area. The magazine initially evaluated 5,453 hospitals based on three standards: membership in the Council of Teaching Hospitals; affiliation with a medical school; and the availability of advanced services and technology. Hospitals that met one of these three standards were then considered for rankings in a specialty. Only 170 U.S. hospitals made the list.

To be ranked in the top 50 in a specialty, a hospital had to meet one of two requirements: It must have treated a minimum number of Medicare patients who had specific conditions or underwent certain procedures during a three-year period, or it had to be named among the best by at least one physician in the latest three annual surveys.

Finally, hospitals were rated on three more factors for each specialty: reputation, death rate and care factors, such as the patient-to-nurse ratio.