TOP USA CANCER HOSPITALS

Same as last year, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is the top-ranked cancer hospital in the United States, according to 2016/17 rankings from U.S. News & World Report.

And numbers 2, 3, and 4 in the rankings were once again the same: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in New York City; Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, and Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, in Boston, Massachusetts.

But there was at least one surprise among the top 10 cancer hospitals: Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, in Tampa, Florida, jumped from number 18 in 2015 to number 6 in 2016.

The US News rankings use four measures as part of the total score: reputation with specialists (27.5%); survival (37.5%); patient safety (5%); and other care-related indicators, including nurse staffing (30%).

The relative importance of reputation has been criticized in the past. "It's much pomp and circumstance and ends up being more about marketing than patient care," Ted Okun, executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance, in Washington, DC, told Medscape Medical News 2 years ago.

Here are the top 20 cancer hospitals for this year:

1. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
2. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City
3. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
4. Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, Boston
5. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
6. Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida
7. Seattle Cancer Care Alliance/University of Washington Medical Center
8. Cleveland Clinic
9. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
10. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
11. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
12. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia
13. Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, California
14. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago
15. Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St Louis
16. University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill
17. New York–Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, New York City
18. USC Norris Cancer Hospital-Keck Medical Center of USC, Los Angeles
19. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
20. City of Hope, Duarte, California

MD Anderson also had two subspecialties in the survey's top 10 of all general hospitals: ear, nose and throat, and gynecologic and reproductive medicine. The Texas cancer center's urology department was also ranked 36th nationally.