Kaiser Health News (KHN) writes of how the nation’s best-regarded hospitals rate in terms of their patients’ Medicare spending. KHN looked at the 16 hospitals that U.S. News includes in its widely followed “Best Hospitals’ Honor Roll,” which is calculated based on a mix of quality indicators and reputation surveys. (One hospital, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, was omitted because Medicare didn’t provide figures for Maryland hospitals.)
As a group, the average cost to Medicare for a patient at a U.S. News top hospital was $17,808, or 1 percent below the national median spending of $17,988. The least expensive of these hospitals had patients who, on average, cost Medicare 5 percent below the median (represented as a ratio of 0.95). The most expensive hospital had patients who, on average, cost Medicare 3 percent above the median (1.03).