Baltimore is the best city in America in which to get sick, according to a new study by the consumer group HealthGrades which ranked the nation's hospitals.

Nine out of the 19 Baltimore hospitals finished in the top 5 percent of the 5,000 hospitals the study examined across a broad spectrum of 26 categories ranging from diagnoses to surgical and other medical procedures.

While HealthGrades, which tracks hospital and doctor care in its annual Hospital Quality and Clinical Care survey, found Baltimore to be number one overall, it also gave 12 other cities exceptionally high performance marks. They were Phoenix and Prescott, Ariz.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Richmond, Va.; Cincinnati, Ohio; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; St. Louis, Mo.; Hartford and New Haven, Conn.; and Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Mich.

According to HealthGrades, Baltimore and the other top cities’ hospitals “are leading the way in reducing mortality and complication rates.”
“In some instances, the top cities named in this report can make the claim that almost half of their hospitals provide this level of care,” HealthGrades noted in a news release announcing its survey, which relies on information collected from patients and medical records nationwide.
The study found, for example, that 47 percent of the hospitals in the Baltimore area are providing exceptional care, 44 percent in the Phoenix-Prescott area, 43 percent in Cedar Rapids, and 43 percent as well in Richmond.