The newest edition of Newsweek's annual ranking of the World's Best Hospitals, compiled with data analyst Statista, has now been released. As with any recurring list, there's bound to be some curiosity about how the rankings have changed from one year to the next. So, we pored over the top 50 to highlight the hospitals that have climbed up the rankings in the past couple of years to land in a better spot in 2024.
The top-50 hospital with the biggest jump in its ranking over the past two years is Seoul, South Korea's Severance Hospital, which is part of the Yonsei University Health System. Severance ranked in 70th place in 2022, then moved to No. 67 in 2023 before making a substantial leap to land at 40 this year.
Founded in 1885, Severance is South Korea's oldest Western-style hospital and says it is the country's most-visited hospital by foreigners. The facility currently counts 2,437 beds, 821 doctors and eight surgery robots, and it admits about 840,000 patients per year and handles 2.5 million outpatients.
Across town from Severance, Seoul National University Hospital has also made moves up the list. Finishing at No. 55 in 2022 before rising to 49 in 2023, the facility rose six spots this year to be ranked at 43. Counting 1,950 doctors and 1,782 beds spread across three facilities (a main branch, a cancer-focused facility and a children's medical center), the hospital announced in November of last year that it had opened up "the possibility of excellent cartilage regeneration treatment through stem cell isolation and culture."
Advancing research related to regeneration and stem cells is also a priority at New York's Mount Sinai, which in April 2023 launched its Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The center will "lead research to foster novel discoveries and explore new treatments for a range of diseases from leukemia to Alzheimer's disease," according to a press release.
Mount Sinai has also moved up in the World's Best Hospitals ranking in recent years, going from 27th in 2022 to 26th in 2023, and then jumping six spots to land at No. 20 this year. The Mount Sinai Health System, with an annual revenue of $11.3 billion, includes the Icahn School of Medicine and eight medical campuses in the New York City metropolitan area and counts 3,919 total beds.
The ranking's second-biggest climber within the top 50 is Toronto's North York General, which jumped from 64th place two years ago to 55 in 2023 and landed at 47 this year. The hospital counts 627 total beds and 1,846 full-time employees, according to statistics published in 2020.
In December 2023, North York General announced that its new surgical e-booking and wait-time management system—called Novari Access To Care (ATC)—will automate administrative processes and supply surgeons and their teams with real-time patient data to help provide timely access to surgeries.
Moving from North America to Europe, Munich, Germany's LMU Klinikum improved its standing since 2022. Part of Ludwig Maximilian University, the hospital climbed nine spots across two years, from No. 35 in 2022 to 31 in 2023 to land in 26th place this year. LMU Klinikum treats nearly 500,000 individuals as in- or outpatients annually, and performs around 50,000 surgical procedures. The facility is Germany's second-largest transplant center, with 247 organ transplantations in 2022.
Just two spots away from LMU Klinikum in the ranking, São Paulo's Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein finished at No. 28 this year, after landing at 34 in each of the previous two years' rankings. Between its public and private settings, Israelita Albert Einstein counts 1,200 beds spread across three hospitals. It is the only Latin American facility in the top 50.
The U.S. is the most represented country among the top 50 hospitals, with 12 facilities. Germany had six hospitals in the top 50, while South Korea's four entries (the two mentioned above, plus Asan Medical Center and Samsung Medical Center) are noteworthy for all having risen in their respective rankings over the past two years. Asan finished at 22, after ranking at 30 two years ago and then No. 29 last year, while Samsung placed at 34 after finishing at 43 and then 40 in the previous years' rankings.
Overall, this year's list represents a wider swath of countries.
"The sixth edition of the ranking is an extension and update of the annual World's Best Hospital ranking which was first published by Newsweek and Statista in March 2019 and featured the top 1,000 hospitals in 11 countries," Statista wrote in an email about the ranking. "In the 2024 edition, 30 countries and 2,400 hospitals are featured in total."
Two new countries that hadn't previously been surveyed by Statista were featured in this year's ranking: Chile and Malaysia. They were added based on multiple comparability factors, including standard of living/life expectancy, population size, number of hospitals and data availability.
Chile's Clínica Alemana Vitacura, located in the capital of Santiago, ranked at No. 173. Malaysia's Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur finished at 223, and the country's Sunway Medical Centre in the city of Petaling Jaya, a Kuala Lumpur suburb, occupies the 233rd spot.
For a look at the full list, check out Newsweek's 2024 ranking of the World's Best Hospitals.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
