What do top hospitals have in common? Not as much as you think.

What do top hospitals have in common? Not as much as you think.

Researchers at the Atlas looked at how the top 23 academic medical centers, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, provide care to their patients. Their results show huge variations in how the very best hospitals care for their sickest patients.

A patient at New York Presbyterian Hospital can expect to spend 20 days in the hospital during the last six months of life. The average Mayo Clinic patient would have 10 days in the hospital over the same time span.

At the University of Utah, the average patient sees 20 doctors during the last six months of life. At the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in California, that number is 73 physicians.

A patient at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Hospital is three times as likely to have a fall or injury while in the hospital than one at Cedars Sinai, also in Los Angeles.

“We know these differences cannot be explained by the prevalence of diseases,” Goodman says. “Yes, populations differ. Those are small differences we see compared to the dramatic differences in care.”

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