HSS Website Top-Ranked for Quality

New York, NY—January 30, 2012

Hospital for Special Surgery’s website was top-ranked in a study published in the Journal of Healthcare Management.

Researchers measured the quality of 636 U.S. hospital and healthcare websites along several scales: accessibility, content, marketing, technology, and an overall score. On a 10-point scale, the websites scored an average of 6.37. The study found that the top-ranking sites tended to be specialty or children’s hospitals.

The top hospital and health system websites and their overall scores:

• Arizona Cancer Center — 8.4
• Scripps Health — 8.3
• Hospital for Special Surgery — 8.2
• Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital and Nursing Home — 8.2
• Palo Alto Medical Foundation — 8.1
• American Family Children's Hospital — 8.1
• Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center — 8.1
• The Children's Medical Center of Dayton — 8.1
• Avera Health — 8.1
• The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — 8
• Nationwide Children’s Hospital — 8
• Sutter Health — 8
• MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital — 8
• National Jewish Health — 8
• The Children’s Hospital, Denver, Colorado — 8
• PinnacleHealth — 8
• Mayo Clinic — 8
• Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh — 8
• Genesis Health System — 8
• Meriter Hospital — 8
• Johns Hopkins Children’s Center — 8
• SUNY Upstate Medical University — 8
• University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center — 8

"In 2011, more than 80 percent of adults report using the Internet as a resource for healthcare decisions," the study’s authors wrote. "In instances when consumers are able to make a choice in the location and type of care they seek, it is increasingly likely that information gathered from a health system’s website plays a role in helping the customer decide which facility to use."

Unlike other comparisons where individuals’ judgment and opinion are used to determine rankings, this study’s methodology relied on objective measures obtained through a webcrawler and an analytics engine. The rankings were calculated based on 29 weighted measures. Examples include download speed, text density, Google search results, URL formatting and page linking.

Read an accompanying article on iHeathBeat.com, a website that specializes in reporting on technology's impact on healthcare.