Maine’s tally of ‘high-performing’ hospitals falls sharply in latest U.S. News ranking

Rendering / Courtesy of Maine Medical Center For the 11th straight year, U.S. News named Maine Medical Center “best regional hospital" in Maine. Maine Med is undergoing a $588.4 million expansion that is on target for a 2024 completion. The project puts a larger focus on the patient experience while anticipating future space needs.

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By Alexis Wells

The number of "high-performing" hospitals in Maine has fallen by more than half in the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking, released Tuesday.

The magazine’s annual evaluations, now in their 34th year, compared over 5,000 hospitals throughout the U.S. and gave the high marks to six of 39 health care facilities in Maine.

In 2022, U.S. News rated 15 hospitals in Maine as high-performing.

For the 11th straight year, U.S. News named Maine Medical Center “best regional hospital" in the state. U.S. News also rated MMC as high-performing in 13 common procedures and conditions and in the specialty of urology.

The 700-bed hospital in Portland received the same number of high-performance ratings last year. This year those ratings were in areas such as back surgery, colon cancer surgery, diabetes care and leukemia treatment.

Dr. Joel Botler, Maine Med chief medical officer, said in a news release, “The consistency of this ranking by U.S. News speaks to the high-quality patient-centered care that our team provides year after year. MMC never takes these rankings for granted and will continue to look for ways to improve as we strive towards our vision of working together so our communities are the healthiest in America.”

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center ranked as the second-best hospital in Maine. The 411-bed Bangor facility, part of the Northern Light Health system, received high-performing evaluations in five procedures and conditions, down from the seven last year.

Four other Maine hospitals received high-performance rankings:

Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston, four ratings
Northern Light Mercy Hospital, in Portland, three ratings
St. Joseph’s Hospital, in Bangor, two ratings
York Hospital, in York, three ratings

The U.S. News rankings included evaluations across 15 specialties and 21 procedures and conditions. Fewer than half of the evaluated hospitals earned high-performing ratings, the magazine said.