This week, U.S. News and World Report released its list of best hospitals for 2022.

Every year, the publication attempts to rank and rate health care centers in this country.

It's a monumental task for data journalists Ben Harder and his team.

The way we rank hospitals is by studying tens of millions of receipts that the federal

government receives from several thousand U.S. hospitals each year.

Their work draws both praise and criticism, depending on where a hospital might fall

on the list.

It also raises a lot of questions, like how do you compare very different kinds of hospitals,

and how do you get people to trust your rankings?

Some people don't trust them, and some argue that they do more harm than good.

Dr. Karen Jordan-Maddox of Washington University in St. Louis has rated the Raiders, and she's

skeptical.

Even with all the data in the world, you couldn't get it right.

From the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is FreakonomicsMD.

I'm Bob Ugenna, I'm an economist and I'm also a medical doctor.

Each episode, I dissect an interesting question at the sweet spot between health and economics.

Today on the show, we're going to talk about hospital rankings.

What do they get right, and what do they get wrong when it comes to hospital quality?

We'll talk to Ben Harder about how he tries to get an accurate picture of what hospitals

are doing and to Karen Jordan-Maddox about why that's so hard to do.

I'm Ben Harder.

I'm the Chief of Health Analysis at US News and World Report.

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