An Analysis of the <i>US News & World Report</i> Methodology for Attribution of Specialty Care in Otolaryngology and Urology.

Abstract

<i>US News & World Report</i> (<i>USNWR</i>) rankings can assist patients with choosing where to receive their specialty care. <i>USNWR</i> methodology assumes that the specialty caring for hospitalized patients is equivalent to the specialty assigned by administrative coding. We examined the frequency of discordance between <i>USNWR</i> methodology-assigned specialty and the actual specialty care received for 2 surgical specialties, otolaryngology (ENT) and urology (GU). Our analysis included inpatient deaths identified by <i>USNWR</i> coding for these specialties from 2013 to 2017 at a single academic tertiary care center. We found that a minority of patients with deaths attributed by <i>USNWR</i> to these 2 specialties were actually cared for by ENT (6/14; 43%) or GU (3/19; 16%). Only 5 of 14 (36%) and 2 of 19 (11%) deaths were potentially associated with ENT and GU care, respectively. We identified a significant discordance between <i>USNWR</i>-assigned specialty and the actual specialty care received.