July 11, 2008

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Communications Department
(320) 251-2700, ext. 74980

St. Cloud Hospital among America’s Best Hospitals for orthopedics, urology in U.S. News & World Report ranking

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – St. Cloud Hospital has been ranked as one of America’s Best Hospitals for orthopedics and urology in U.S. News’s 2008 publication of America’s Best Hospitals, accessible today online at www.usnews.com/besthospitals and on sale at newsstands Monday, July 14.

Authoritative and influential, the 2008 America’s Best Hospitals guide ranks 170 medical centers nationwide in 16 specialties – with full data available online for another 1,500 that are unranked. In addition, the Honor Roll singles out the “best of the best.”

The 16 ranked specialties are cancer; gastroenterology; ear, nose, and throat; endocrinology; geriatric care; gynecology; heart and heart surgery; kidney disease; neurology and neurosurgery; ophthalmology; orthopedics; psychiatry; rehabilitation; respiratory disorders; rheumatology; and urology.

“We are proud to be ranked as one of America’s Best Hospitals,” said Craig Broman, president of St. Cloud Hospital. “This is important validation of the care we provide in collaboration with physicians from St. Cloud Orthopedic Associates and Adult & Pediatric Urology.”

“The America’s Best Hospitals rankings provide readers with trusted material during some of life’s most concerning times – hospitalization,” said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S.News & World Report. “Our rankings highlight the internal culture of excellence embraced by caregivers in the great hospitals throughout the U.S.”

The rankings in 12 of the 16 specialties weigh three elements equally: reputation, death rate, and a set of care-related factors such as nursing and patient services. In these 12 specialties, hospitals have to pass through several gates to be ranked and considered a Best Hospital:

1. The first gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked at all by requiring that any of three conditions be met – to be a teaching hospital, to be affiliated with a teaching hospital, or to have at least six important medical technologies from a defined list of 13.

2. The second gate determines whether a hospital is eligible to be ranked in a particular specialty. To be eligible, the hospital had to either have at least a specified volume in certain procedures and conditions over three years, or had to have been nominated in our yearly specialist survey.

3. The third gate is whether a hospital does well enough to be ranked, based on its reputation, death rate, and factors like nurse staffing and technology.

In the four other specialties – ophtalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology – ranking is based solely on reputation, derived from the three most recent physician surveys.

For a complete listing, visit health.usnews.com/besthospitals.

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