Next month, U.S. News will publish the 2018-19 edition of the Best Hospitals rankings with some refinements in its methodology, according to an article on the U.S. News website.
This is the first year that the analyses included Medicare claims containing ICD-10 codes, which replaced ICD-9 codes in 2015 and the methodologies was updated to account for the change.
Also, risk-adjusted mortality rates will be presented with a 1-to-10 “survival score,” with scores of 1 through 5 indicating a higher-than-expected mortality rate. The calculation of the 1-to-10 score was performed differently from last year; therefore, survival scores are not directly comparable across years.
In the Procedures & Conditions methodology, more outcome measures were included in final models this year and those included correlate more closely with a hospital’s overall rating.