Healthgrades named the 50 recipients of its 2023 Specialty Excellence Awards Oct. 25, including the top hospitals for surgical care.

Using 2019-2021 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review data, Healthgrades analyzed risk-adjusted mortality and complication rates for 15 of the most common in-hospital surgical procedures, including cardiac, vascular, joint replacement, prostate, spine and gastrointestinal surgeries.

And nine of California Hospitals were on the list of 50 national hospitals to received an Award.

– – Eisenhower Medical Center(Rancho Mirage, Calif.)
– – Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center
– – Kaiser Permanente San Leandro Medical Center
– – Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center
– – Los Robles Regional Medical Center (Thousand Oaks)
– – Palomar Medical Center Escondido
– – Providence Saint John’s Health Center (Santa Monica)
– – Redlands Community Hospital
– – Scripps Green Hospital (La Jolla)

To help consumers evaluate and compare hospital performance specific to specialty areas, Healthgrades communicates performance in two ways – through ratings and awards.

To measure performance, Healthgrades used Medicare inpatient data from the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) file purchased from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for years 2019 through 2021. For Appendectomy and Bariatric Surgery, Healthgrades used inpatient data provided by 16 states that provide all-payer data for years 2018 through 2020 (one year behind MedPAR data years).

Patient outcomes data for 33 conditions or procedures were analyzed for virtually every hospital in the country, with the exception of Appendectomy and Bariatric Surgery for which hospitals in 16 all-payer states were assessed.

The first and most fundamental way that Healthgrades communicates performance is through star ratings. Star ratings are an evaluation of the hospital’s actual performance as compared to the predicted performance for that hospital based on a specific risk-adjustment model applied to that hospital.