Healthgrades ranks America’s best hospitals, but some are a long drive away

When Healthgrades sets out to rank America’s best hospitals, the goal is to highlight the top-performing facilities across the country.

Brad Bowman, chief medical officer of Healthgrades, says he's shocked at how many states don't have easy access to one of America's top hospitals.

Healthgrades unveiled its rankings of the top 50 hospitals for 2025, along with the top 100 and America’s best 250 hospitals. Even the biggest list constitutes an elite group. Healthgrades’ ranking of what it determines to be the best 250 hospitals represents the top 5% of America’s hospitals.

• Read more: Healthgrades selects America's top 50 hospitals for 2025

However, millions of Americans don’t live within easy access of the nation’s top 250 hospitals, let alone the top 50.

There are 15 states without a hospital on Healthgrades’ list of the best 250 hospitals, including Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico and others. About 37 million Americans live in those 15 states.

Nearly half of all Americans (47%) live more than 25 miles away from one of the top 250 hospitals on the list.

Brad Bowman, chief medical officer and head of data science and quality at Healthgrades, says he was disappointed to see that so many people have to travel a significant distance to get to one of Healthgrades’ best hospitals.

“That was kind of the big takeaway this year,” he says, adding, “Access seems to be a critical issue.”

Bowman says he was alarmed to see so many states didn’t have one of the top 250 hospitals. Looking at a map and seeing the states without a hospital on the list, Bowman says, “I was shocked.”

Even if the list is expanded to include the top 20% of hospitals ranked by Healthgrades, which would cover about 1,000 facilities, nearly 1 in 3 Americans (30%) still have travel challenges to get to high-quality care, according to the group’s analysis.

Just as there are food deserts in certain communities, where residents don’t have a full supermarket or the chance to buy healthy foods close to home, the nation also sees large swaths where there aren’t top-notch hospitals, Bowman says.

“It does appear that there are these very large ‘quality deserts,’ if you think of healthcare in those terms,” he says. “Not that there's not local care available, but the best care is maybe a long way away.”

Many of Healthgrades’ best hospitals are clustered in larger cities and metropolitan areas, Bowman notes. He notes the list includes a number of hospitals with large systems, but that plenty of small hospitals and systems earned recognition among the top hospitals.

He calls the question of access “a public health challenge.”

“There's a lot of hospitals out there, but they're just not performing at the same level that these hospitals are performing,” Bowman says. “So how do you get the other hospitals to start to perform at a higher level?”

Americans face other healthcare deserts, especially when it comes to maternal health. The March of Dimes has designated more than one-third (36%) of America’s counties as maternity care deserts, because they don’t have hospitals offering obstetric services or they lack obstetric providers.

Healthgrades compiles its ranking of the best hospitals on an annual basis, both to shine a spotlight on top providers and to give consumers more insight into the best hospitals in their region. He encourages consumers to use the list to help find hospitals that are best for their own particular needs.

Bowman points out that most hospitals are usually strong in a few areas, and he also points out that many smaller facilities are delivering good patient care.

But for millions of Americans, they may have to plan to travel to get to one of the nation’s best hospitals.