It is not a ranking of academic performance & has nothing to do with residency training/fellowships. There is no ranking based on research output/funding etc. which is the true reflection of academic activity. Here is how the hospitals were ranked in 2009:
Reputation counted as 32.5 percent of the score. Each year we draw a
random sample of 200 physicians from a national database for each of 12 specialties. They are asked to list five hospitals they consider among the best in their specialty for difficult cases, without taking into account cost or location. The figure shown for "reputation" in the rankings is the
total percentage of the specialists in 2007, 2008, and 2009 who named the hospital in their response.
A
mortality index made up 32.5 percent of the score. It indicates a
hospital's ability to keep patients alive. Taking into account Medicare inpatients with certain conditions, it represents a
comparison of the number of deaths within 30 days of admission in 2005, 2006, and 2007 with the number of deaths that would have been expected given the severity of each patient's illness. An index number above 1.00 means the hospital did worse than expected; below 1.00, better than expected. A program used by many hospitals and researchers called the 3M Health Information Systems APR-DRG made adjustments to the index according to the severity of each patient's condition.
A new
patient safety index comprised 5 percent of the score. It shows
how well a hospital minimizes harm to patients. Two of the seven index items, for example, are deaths of patients whose conditions should not have put them at significant risk, and incisions that reopen after surgery.
Other care-related factors, 30 percent of the score. Includes
nurse staffing, technology, and other care-related information. The primary source was the American Hospital Association's 2007 survey of member and nonmember hospitals.
These are all very good if you are training in hospital management or trying to be a nurse. How would these rankings tell you anything about academics?
It is better to go to the NIH & NINDS websites & find out which program is getting how much funding. I also prefer using a neutral source like:
http://www.arwu.org/ARWU-FIELD2008/MED2008.htm
