US News ranks the best hospitals in Maine, and nationwide

File Photo / William Hall Maine Medical Center again ranked as the best hospital in the state, according to the U.S. News & World Report study released Tuesday.

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By William Hall

U.S. News & World Report on Tuesday released its annual ranking of the country’s best hospitals, and for the ninth year in a row, Maine Medical Center tops the state.

The popular report card, which this year graded more than 4,750 hospitals throughout the U.S., contains generally high marks for 40 health care facilities in Maine.

In addition to its No. 1 state rank, MMC was recognized as “high performing” in 13 common procedures and condition treatments.

But U.S. News rated the 637-bed Portland flagship of the MaineHealth system as “lower than average” in how MMC's patient population reflects the racial diversity of the community. (See below.)

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center ranked as the second-best hospital statewide. The 411-bed Bangor facility, part of the Northern Light Health system, received high-performing evaluations in six procedures and conditions.

In 2020, EMMC was high-performing in three of the clinical areas, while MMC received that rating in 10.

Only the state's two largest hospitals received rankings, but other Maine high-performing hospitals in this year’s U.S. News study are:

Houlton Regional Hospital, which received one rating
LincolnHealth, in Damariscotta, one rating
MaineGeneral Medical Center, in Augusta, three ratings
Northern Light Mercy Hospital, in Portland, four ratings
Mount Desert Island Hospital, in Bar Harbor, one rating
Northern Maine Medical Center, in Fort Kent, one rating
Redington-Fairview General Hospital, in Skowhegan, one rating
Southern Maine Health Care-Biddeford Medical Center, one rating
St. Joseph Hospital, in Bangor, one rating.

Fewer than a third of all hospitals received any rating in this year’s study, U.S. News said.

The total number of Maine hospitals judged high-performing, 11, is up from the 2020 total, seven. However, this year U.S. News reconfigured and expanded the number of clinical categories that were considered to 17. So the comparison isn’t quite apples-to-apples.

Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn., ranked as the country's best hospital overall. Mayo and other health care providers have frequently used the U.S. News rankings to market themselves.

MMC President Jeff Sanders said in a news release Tuesday, “This is an important recognition of the quality, patient-centered care that our team delivers every day at Maine Medical Center. MMC is dedicated to serving its mission of caring for our community, educating tomorrow’s caregivers and researching new ways to provide care.”

In a statement emailed to Mainebiz, EMMC President Rand J. O’Leary said, “Each and every one of our professionals here at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center work hard every day to give the care and compassion our communities have come to expect from us. This recognition could not arrive at a better time and is so appreciated.”

Behind the numbers

The U.S. News rankings, which the magazine publisher launched in 1990, have sometimes been criticized as relying more on reputations than results.

For example, a 2010 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that “the relative standings of the top 50 hospitals [in the U.S. News rankings] largely reflect the subjective reputations of those hospitals. Moreover, little relationship exists between subjective reputation and objective measures of hospital quality among the top 50 hospitals.”

The 2021 rankings, like last year’s, incorporated no criteria to reflect the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. News said its analysis used information predating the crisis, “based largely on objective measures such as risk-adjusted survival and discharge-to-home rates, volume, and quality of nursing, among other care-related indicators.”

However, the publisher did include a separate measurement of some hospitals in this year’s study to evaluate "whether care is delivered, in an equitable way for patients that are admitted to the hospital, as well as for residents that live in the surrounding community."

Maine Medical Center was the only hospital in the state included among the 1,900 that received a U.S. News Health Equity Measures grade. MMC's record of providing elective care to patients was deemed “lower than average” in reflecting the racial make-up of the surrounding community.