Where to get sick

From a US News survey of 10,000 medical specialists, here are the best hospitals in the country. John Hopkins almost always comes in #1. Modern medical research was practically invented there, it was the first modern research university.

 

In 1917 with the world in the grips of the Spanish Flu, it was the scientists at Johns Hopkins who first isolated it and discovered that it was indeed a virus. That might sound obvious today, but every other medical facility in the world thought it was a bacteria. I read a book about this story and it was very interesting: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Among other cool facts: The Spanish Flu was actually from Kansas, not Spain.

 

Thirty three Nobel prize winners have been affiliated with J-H. For the last three decades they have spent more money on medical research than any other facility the the world. And in medicine, I suppose money is where it's at.

1. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
2. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
3. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
4. Cleveland Clinic
5. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
6. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, N.Y.
7. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
8. Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston
9. Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.
10. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
11. Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis
12. UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
13. University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle
14. University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor (tie)
15. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville (tie)
16. Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York
17. Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif.