What does it take to be the No. 1 hospital in Florida? What does it mean to be the No. 1 hospital in Florida?
Ask AdventHealth Orlando, which was recently ranked as the top hospital in the state by U.S. News and World Report. The publication, which is well-known for its college and hospital rankings, examined 4,400 U.S. hospitals and ranked them according to criteria such as patient outcomes, risk-adjusted mortality rates, preventable complications and level of nursing care.
AdventHealth Orlando grabbed the top spot from the Jacksonville branch of the Mayo Clinic, a renowned organization that has earned an international reputation for medical excellence. Mayo Clinic Florida had been the state’s No. 1 hospital for eight of the last 11 years. AdventHealth Orlando previously had a three-year run as the state’s top hospital in the 2010s.
How did AdventHealth Orlando accomplish this? Ask Dr. Victor Herrera, chief clinical officer of the hospital chain’s Central Florida Division — basically the person in charge of medical care.
“This recognition is the result of us pursuing our goals. Our goals have not been getting the medal, but really our commitment to our philosophy of whole person care, which means providing care for more than just the body, but also the mind and the spirit,” says Herrera, who has been with AdventHealth for 15 years. “It is rewarding to get a recognition that I think validates that if your philosophy is whole person care, then outcomes and performance and metrics and awards follow.”
For the first time, AdventHealth Orlando also made U.S. News and World Report’s “honor roll” of the top 20 hospitals in the United States — the only Florida hospital to do so.
AdventHealth is Florida’s second-largest hospital system behind HCA. Formerly known in this state as Florida Hospital until a 2019 name change, it’s a Seventh-day Adventist nonprofit organization with more than 50 hospitals in nine states.
AdventHealth Orlando is the chain’s largest hospital. With 1,400 beds, it’s the second-largest hospital in Florida behind Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
In the U.S. News and World Report rankings, AdventHealth Orlando also earned a place among the top 50 hospitals nationwide in 11 clinical specialties including cancer; cardiology; neurology; obstetrics and gynecology; orthopedics; ear, nose and throat; diabetes and endocrinology; gastroenterology; pulmonology; geriatrics; and urology.
The U.S. News ranking applies to all eight hospitals in AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, which all operate under AdventHealth Orlando’s Medicare license. The evaluation also included data from the chain’s hospitals in Altamonte Springs, Apopka, Celebration, east Orlando, Kissimmee, Winter Garden and Winter Park.
In Herrera’s view, the ranking validates his hospital’s strategy and philosophy.
“I think that there’s been the question of, ‘Well, it’s okay to have that holistic approach, but does that really translate into metrics that are very specific, very concrete, that we measure, like mortality, readmissions, complications?’ And I think our result answers that question,” he says. “It validates that whole person care and world class care can co-exist in the same sentence.”
Top Five Hospitals in Florida
1. AdventHealth Orlando
2. Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville
3. UF Health Shands Hospital
4. Tampa General Hospital
5. Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center
Rankings by U.S. News & World Report