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When restaurant-goers want to check out a new eatery, they can go to Google or Yelp. Car buyers can look at Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Reports.
But what about hospital patients?
There are all sorts of ways to decide what hospital you want to go to, including the recommendations of friends and the suggestions of trusted medical providers. But for those looking for more information, there are also a number of rating systems you can use to evaluate your hospital - and make a more informed decision about where to get your care.
One prominent rating system is The Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Grade, which looks specifically at patient safety. Another is the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' overall star rating, which is a broader evaluation of healthcare quality.
Both of these systems rate hospitals and give you a sense of how well they perform, according to that specific rating system. That means you can look up the hospitals closest to you and check their ratings.
There are other ways outside entities evaluate hospitals, too, including U.S. News & World Report's ranking of best hospitals - which is especially useful if you're searching for the best hospital for a certain type of care.
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All these systems operate a little different, and hospital advocates advise a grain of salt for each of them.
"Any scorecard is just one view, and there is no one perfect rating system," said Carrie Williams, the spokesperson for the Texas Hospital Association, in an email. "What works for one patient may not be right for another."
Stephen Love, the president and CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, similarly said patients should make sure to understand what factors go into each system's rating. Patients who look at the ratings, Love said, should also take any concerns to their medical provider.
Some rating systems might not take into account the different populations or more complex diagnoses that some hospitals treat, Love said. Medical providers themselves may be able to add that context.
"You kind of have to wade through it and try to make an informed decision," Love said, "but I wouldn't take what it says just at face value."
With those caveats in mind, here are a few ways to research your local hospital and gather more information as you make your medical care choices.
CMS star ratings
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services operates an online tool called Care Compare. The tool shows quality and safety evaluations for facilities, including hospitals, that accept Medicare.
Care Compare only includes information for Medicare-certified hospitals. For hospitals that are included, the ratings can be a useful tool for all patients, not just Medicare beneficiaries.
The CMS tool has a composite score for eligible hospitals, called the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating. That score, according to the CMS website, is based on five measures: mortality, care safety, timely and effective care, readmission and patient experience. Each of those broader measures pulls from a grouping of more specific data, from infections reported after specific procedures to the assessment speed for ER patients.
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The purpose of the composite score, according to a CMS website, is to provide a single, simple rating that summarizes other scoring information that's already publicly reported.
Any rating tool has limitations. The CMS star ratings, for instance, are usually based on delayed information. Many of the datasets for the April 2026 ratings, according to the CMS website, were collected in periods ending in 2024.
The American Hospital Association has also been critical of the star rating system in the past and has repeatedly asked for updates to the methodology.
Leapfrog safety grades
Leapfrog, a nonprofit watchdog in the healthcare space, publishes its Hospital Safety Grade reports twice annually.
The grade system focuses solely on safety, based on up to 22 scored measures. (One of those measures is a composite score, according to Leapfrog spokesperson Kemble Mountcastle. Counting each of the underlying measures for that composite score yields a total of up to 32 scored measures.)
Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, described the factors as falling into two buckets: safety issues such as infections or surgery errors, and structural components such as safety policies and practices.
Some of those factors rely on self-reported data, and that portion of the safety grades has been a major point of contention. Tenet Healthcare - a Dallas-headquartered hospital system that includes some hospitals that have faced public scrutiny - sued Leapfrog over its ratings of a handful of Florida hospitals. A judge in March sided with Tenet and ordered Leapfrog to retract ratings of Tenet hospitals that had not participated in Leapfrog's survey.
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Binder said Leapfrog disagrees with the court ruling and is appealing. In the meantime, the nonprofit has complied with the court ruling and removed ratings for not only the Tenet hospitals in the lawsuit, but nearly 500 hospitals nationwide that did not participate in the surveys.
Still, Binder said the ratings that are available can be a useful starting point for consumers who want to arm themselves with more information.
Binder, similar to the Texas hospital advocates, recommended patients delve into the ratings themselves to understand which factors are most important to them.
"It'll give you the grade, but then you can dig in," Binder said. "From there, decide if they meet your own personal standards for being safe enough for you."
Just like Love suggested, Binder also encouraged patients to take any concerns to their medical providers. That type of feedback can help improve care in the long run, she said.
U.S. News & World Report rankings
If you're looking for a top-ranked hospital in a specific specialty - such as geriatrics or orthopedics - or for a specific procedure - such as pacemaker implantation or spinal fusion - then the U.S. News & World Report rankings are a good place to start.
You can look through these reports in different ways.
You can search a specific specialty and find the highest-ranked hospitals in your area. This may help you narrow down your options if you or a loved one has a complex or ongoing medical condition. Similarly, you can search a couple dozen common procedures and conditions, and find the top-ranked hospitals in those categories, too.
The website also allows you to search by specific facility, so you can look up your local hospital and see what categories they rank highly in.
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The system is set up with a focus on the best hospitals, according to Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis for U.S. News.
"We've designed our rankings and ratings to be most helpful to patients who are seeking a top performing hospital for the specific medical service," Harder said in an emailed statement.
That means the rankings are easiest to use if you start by looking up a certain category of care; That's in comparison to other systems, which are designed to look up certain hospitals as a starting point.
Specific facility profiles do still have rating information available, even if they're not at the top of the pack.
If you're stuck between a few different hospitals, the U.S. News & World Report website also has a tool called Hospital Compare. The tool allows you to select up to five facilities and see how they compare to each other on various measures. (Note: Hospital Compare prompts a user to create a free account before using the full tool.)
How to pick a hospital
Healthcare decisions are complex, and it can be difficult to know how to pick a hospital or medical providers. These rating and ranking systems are a place to start, a way to gather more information so that you and your loved ones can make informed decisions.
But these systems - and others not listed here - are just a starting point.
Different people will have different factors that matter most to them. Some patients might care primarily about a hospital's focus on patient safety. Other patients might care more about patient outcomes for a particular diagnosis.
Williams, at the Texas Hospital Association, underscored that reality.
"Just like every hospital is different," Williams wrote in an email, "every patient has their own health story and their own preferences."
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