America's Best Hospitals: The 2009-10 Honor Roll

America's Best Hospitals, an annual ranking of the country's elite medical centers, is a tool for patients who need medical sophistication most facilities cannot offer. Unlike other rankings and ratings that grade hospitals on how well they execute routine procedures like outpatient hernia repair or manage common conditions like low-grade heart failure, the U.S. News approach looks at how well a hospital handles complex and demanding situations--replacing an 85-year-old man's heart valve, diagnosing and treating a spinal tumor, and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease, to name three examples. High-stakes medicine.

This year, the 20th for Best Hospitals, institutions are ranked in 16 specialties, from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology. A total of 4,861 hospitals were considered; 174, or less than 0.4 percent of the total, were ranked in even one of the 16 specialties.

Below are Top 20 America's Hospital

Rank	Hospital	Points	Specialties
1	Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore	30	15
2	Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.	28	15
3	Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles	26	15
4	Cleveland Clinic	26	13
5	Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston	25	13
6	New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell	24	13
7	University of California, San Francisco Medical Center	21	11
8	Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia	19	12
9	Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis	17	12
10	Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston	17	10
10	Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.	17	10
12	University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle	16	8
13	UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center	13	8
14	University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor	12	8
15	Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif.	11	7
16	Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville	11	6
17	NYU Medical Center, New York	10	7
17	Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn	10	7
19	Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York	9	7
20	Methodist Hospital, Houston	8	7

Source: US News