VCU news

By Cassie Williams Jones

Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center has been ranked as the best hospital in the Richmond Metro area again this year by U.S. News & World Report, the fourth consecutive year the hospital has led in the area.

The medical center’s adult nephrology program ranked 44th in the country in the nephrology specialty's top 50 list. In addition, the hospital received “high performing” designations in cancer; cardiology and heart surgery; diabetes and endocrinology; ear, nose and throat; gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery; geriatrics; neurology and neurosurgery; orthopedics; pulmonology; and urology. Earlier this year, the pediatric nephrology program in the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU ranked 28th in the nation in U.S. News' 2014-15 Best Children's Hospital  rankings.

The annual U.S. News Best Hospitals rankings, now in their 25th year, recognize hospitals that excel in treating the most challenging patients. For 2014-15, U.S. News evaluated hospitals in 16 adult specialties and ranked the top 50 in most of the specialties. Just 3 percent of the nearly 5,000 hospitals that were analyzed for Best Hospitals 2014-15 earned a national ranking in even one specialty.

“Ranking first in the Richmond area is a great honor for us, and we are proud to be leaders in the community we serve,” said John Duval, CEO of MCV Hospitals. “We have an exceptional team of dedicated and talented individuals at our academic medical center who help us achieve excellence in patient care every day, and this recognition is because of them.”

U.S. News also recognizes hospitals that perform nearly at the level of their nationally ranked peers and represent valuable regional sources of quality care.

“The data tell the story – a hospital that emerged from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of,” says U.S. News Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow. “A Best Hospital has demonstrated its expertise in treating the most challenging patients.”

U.S. News publishes Best Hospitals to help guide patients who need a high level of care because they face particularly difficult surgery, a challenging condition or extra risk because of age or multiple health problems. Objective measures such as patient survival and safety data, adequacy of nurse staffing levels and other data largely determined the rankings in most specialties.

The VCU Division of Nephrology provides specialized care of patients with a variety of kidney disorders and hypertension. The medical center is among the nation’s most active and successful kidney-transplant hospitals, with one of the best patient and graft survival rates in the United States. The VCU Hume-Lee Transplant Center, which serves adult and pediatric patients utilizing both living and deceased donors, has performed more than 3,000 kidney transplants, and additionally performs liver, pancreas, pancreatic islet and liver cell transplants.

The specialty rankings and data were produced for U.S. News by RTI International, a leading research organization based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Using the same data, U.S. News produced the state and metro rankings.

The rankings are freely available at http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals and will appear in the U.S. News “Best Hospitals 2015” guidebook, available in August.