Loyola Medicine

MAYWOOD, Ill. - U.S. News & World Report has ranked Loyola as first in the state for heart care and heart surgery in its annual "America's Best Hospitals" issue. This is the fourth straight year that Loyola has claimed the state's top spot for Heart Care and Heart Surgery. Nationwide, Loyola achieved a place among the top 50 hospitals in the U.S. in Heart Care and Heart Surgery (#26); Ear, Nose and Throat (#41); Endocrinology (#24); Gynecology (#42); and Urology (#33). The Best Hospitals rankings are based on a rigorous review of more than 5,100 hospitals nationwide. Of those hospitals, only 176 were ranked in even a single specialty this year. Factors used in evaluating the hospitals included reputation, mortality ratios and other care-related measures. The July 17th issue of the magazine is available online at www.usnews.com/Besthospitals.. Loyola is an academic medical center dedicated to teaching, medical research and patient care. In the U.S. News & World Report listing, Loyola is identified as F.G. McGaw Hospital at Loyola University. To be considered at all, a hospital had to satisfy at least one of three requirements: membership in the Council of Teaching Hospitals; affiliation with a medical school; or availability of at least nine out of 18 key technology-related services, such as shaped-beam radiation, the advanced cancer treatment, or positron emission tomography (PET), a scanning device. For consideration in a specialty, a hospital had to have performed a significant number of defined procedures in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 or it had to have been recommended by at least one physician in that specialty in U.S. News surveys in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Hospitals making it this far then received a numerical assessment (the U.S. News Score that equally weighs three elements: reputation, death rate and such care-related factors as nursing and patient services.) Ranked hospitals were those with the 50 highest scores on those three elements. The research organization RTI International, Research Triangle Park, N.C., produced the 2006 U.S. News & World Report rankings.