This must be coupled with leadership constancy and consistency that creates alignment from the boardroom to the front line of care.'Īccording to Deerberg-Wittram, 'A certain intellectual mindset, an academic culture, a strong focus on patient outcomes and an inspiring environment for young talents are the ingredients for a premier hospital that lasts over decades.' Kaplan adds, 'Top hospitals maintain their excellence by having clear and embraced missions and aspirational visions leading to constancy of purpose that is lived daily by all staff. As Bates says, 'Premier hospitals remain strong largely by attracting the best people, those who are focused on developing new approaches to care and making care better.'

How do the leading hospitals maintain their top status in the midst of a global pandemic that has turned the medical world upside down? The ability and drive to continually innovate is key-and top talent is at the heart of that.

'We learned over the pandemic,' he says, 'that those hospitals truly make a difference in a global crisis who are running expensive and resource-intense infrastructure like emergency departments, ICUs, ECMO et cetera.'

Jens Deerberg-Wittram, CEO and president of Romed Kliniken, a German nonprofit health system, says much of that preparation comes down to being ready to pay for the nuts-and-bolts necessary to take of very sick people. For hospital leaders, it's all about choice, not chance.'ĭr. If there is one thing we take away from our fight against COVID-19, it's the value of preparation. Gregory Katz, professor of Innovation & Value in Health at the University of Paris School of Medicine: 'A critical facilitator of velocity is broad participation from hospital teams. The hospitals that have fared best during the pandemic are those that have learned to work faster by communicating better and breaking down internal silos, according to Dr. Indeed, as the fourth annual ranking of the World's Best Hospitals by Newsweek and Statista shows, consistency in excellence is the hallmark of these institutions, with familiar names dominating the list and top spots. Many medical institutions struggled with these and other challenges over the course of the pandemic but what has set the world's leading hospitals apart is their continued ability to deliver the highest-quality patient care and conduct critical medical research even as they focused on battling COVID. The biggest challenge was the joint setting of individual priorities for a common goal.' 15 on our Global Leaders list) says, 'Many lessons could be learned from COVID, such as recognizing the efficacy of virtual meetings, valuing the importance of hospital hygiene and emphasizing the importance of generalists over siloed specialization. Christoph Meier, Director of the Department of Internal Medicine at University Hospital Zurich (No.

There were also great challenges with managing our supply chain for things like ventilators and personal protective equipment.'ĭr. 17 on Newsweek's Best Hospitals Global Leaders list) says, 'We had to very rapidly convert beds to ICU beds, and close large sections of the hospital, then come up with staff to cover those beds. Kaplan, former CEO of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and current senior vice president of CommonSpirit Health, 'The pandemic has exacerbated a worldwide healthcare staffing shortage, especially in nursing.'ĭavid Bates, chief of general internal medicine and primary care at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital (No. According to the experts who helped guide the results of our annual ranking of the World's Best Hospitals, that has meant learning to adapt to new and existing challenges quickly and improvising on the fly.įor instance, according to Dr. The world's hospitals have been the front line in medicine's constantly evolving war against COVID-19 for two years now.

Woodheart hospital