Details on the awards

For the 2024 Specialty Excellence Awards, Healthgrades evaluated U.S. hospitals' performances and assessed the clinical outcomes of 31 procedures and conditions across 16 specialty care areas, including:

• Cardiac care
• Cardiac surgery
• Coronary intervention
• Cranial neurosurgery
• Critical care
• Gastrointestinal care
• Gastrointestinal surgery
• Joint replacement
• Neurosciences
• Orthopedic surgery
• Prostate surgery
• Pulmonary care
• Spine surgery
• Stroke care
• Surgical care
• Vascular surgery

Hospitals were then awarded between one and five stars to signify their performance. According to Healthgrades, hospitals that received:

• One star performed "worse than expected," meaning their "[a]ctual performance was worse than predicted and the difference was statistically significant."
• Three stars performed "as expected," meaning their "[a]ctual performance was not statistically different from what was predicted."
• Five stars performed "better than expected," meaning their "[a]ctual performance was better than predicted and the difference was statistically significant."

To access the list of Specialty Excellence Award recipients and see whether your hospital was among them, click here.

Key insights

"We celebrate the recognized hospitals for their steadfast dedication to high quality specialty care," said Brad Bowman, CMO and head of data science for Healthgrades. "Healthgrades 2024 Specialty Excellence Awards and Ratings showcase hospitals nationwide that deliver consistently exceptional patient outcomes in a given medical specialty."

According to Healthgrades, the gap between one-star and five-star hospitals has widened over the last several years.

Healthgrades noted that, from 2020 to 2022, if all hospitals had performed similarly to hospitals receiving five-star ratings, 215,667 lives could have been saved and 149,521 complications could have been avoided.

Healthgrades has also launched two resources "to provide additional insights and education," including the "Finding Quality Care" for consumers, which "provides educational content to help consumers understand what factors to consider when choosing healthcare and how Healthgrades can help," as well as the "2024 Specialty Excellence Report" for health systems, which explores the "most significant challenges" for hospitals. (Healthgrades Specialty State Ranking and Excellence Awards, accessed 10/23; Healthgrades Specialty Excellence Awards methodology, accessed 10/23; Healthgrades press release , 10/24)

Download our cheat sheets for summaries on the methodology and metric categories used in some of the biggest hospital quality rating programs.