This year’s US News ‘best hospitals’ list has some standouts among the standouts

The latest lineup of America’s “best of the best” hospitals from US News & World Report is something of an embarrassment of riches for a few cities and health systems. 

The list—which ranked hospitals numerically until 2023 but now presents 20 institutions alphabetically as an “honor roll”—names one health system three times.

That would be Mayo Clinic, recognized for each of its operations in Rochester, Minn., Phoenix, Ariz., and Jacksonville, Fla. 

Meanwhile New York City is home to three winning institutions—Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian and NYU Langone. 

A few cities have two hospitals in the roll. These are Boston (Brigham and Women’s, Massachusetts General), Chicago (Northwestern, Rush) and Los Angeles (Cedars-Sinai, UCLA Ronald Reagan).

The state with the most honorees is California, which has bragging rights to five—the two L.A. hospitals named above plus Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, UC San-Diego Health in that city and UCSF Health in San Francisco.

Aids to hospital selection by region, state, metro area 

In its multipage best-hospitals package, posted Aug. 4, US News emphasizes that the honor roll is only one fruit of the project. 

Two other key pieces are its roundups of best hospitals in each state, best hospitals in around 100 major metro areas (“to make it easy for everyone to find excellent care close to home”) and 505 best regional hospitals. 

All the outlet’s ratings and rankings are based on patient outcomes along with “other factors that matter to patients, such as the quality of their overall experience and interactions with nursing staff,” the package explains. 

There’s a comprehensive breakdown of methodology here.

“For most illnesses, patients do not need to go to an Honor Roll hospital, which may require traveling away from home and paying expenses for out-of-network care,” US News states. “All rankings and ratings should be seen as just a starting point for patients considering where to seek care with input from their doctors. Individual diagnosis, insurance coverage and priorities are important factors in making a personal best choice.”

Here’s the 2026-27 leader board 

As for the show-stopping honor roll, US News underscores that it highlights 20 hospitals that excel across most or all types of care evaluated by the magazine. 

Hospitals received points if they were nationally ranked in the 14 specialties in play, the editors note. “[T]he more specialties and the higher their rank, the more points they got—and if they were rated High Performing in maternity care and any of the 23 [evaluated] procedures and conditions.” 

The top point-scorers made the Honor Roll. Here they are: 

• Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
• Cleveland Clinic
• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• Houston Methodist Hospital
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
• Mayo Clinic-Arizona, Phoenix
• Mayo Clinic-Florida, Jacksonville
• Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City
• NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, New York City
• Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago
• NYU Langone Hospitals, New York City
• Rush University Medical Center, Chicago
• Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California
• UC San Diego Health-La Jolla, Hillcrest and East Campus Medical Centers
• UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, Los Angeles
• UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
• University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor

The best webpage on which to begin perusing the package, which is rich in links as well as data, is probably the Best Hospitals homepage.

Alternatively, a US News news release functions like a general summary.