Edgewood, KY – U.S. News & World Report released its annual Best Hospitals rankings. St. Elizabeth Edgewood has been named a best hospital in the recent rankings, climbing to #2 overall in the state of Kentucky. Now in its 30th year, the rankings recognize hospitals that excel in treating the most challenging patients.

The Best Hospitals specialty rankings assess hospital performance in 16 specialties. The process is represented by two factors. One is a hospital’s ability to develop and sustain a system that delivers high-quality care as determined by the surveys of board-certified physicians, and the other is overall patient experience.

“We have always placed emphasis on delivering excellent overall patient experiences by providing high quality care,” said Garren Colvin, President and CEO of St. Elizabeth Healthcare. “Being named second overall in the state of Kentucky is a prestigious honor which exemplifies outstanding and extraordinary performance by St. Elizabeth’s physicians, associates, and volunteers.”

The measures to be ranked include hospital volume, nurse staffing and other resources that define the hospital environment. The data source used for most measures is the American Hospital Association annual survey. Additional resources include the National Cancer Institute’s list of NIH-designated cancer centers and the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s roster of Nurse Magnet hospitals.

U.S. News publishes Best Hospitals to help guide patients who need a high level of care because they face a particularly difficult surgery, a challenging condition, or added risk because of other health problems or age. Objective measures such as patient survival and safety data, the adequacy of nurse staffing levels and other data largely determined the rankings in most specialties.