SGH ranks 8th and NUH 31st in Newsweek’s best hospitals list
Singapore General Hospital (SGH) fell five spots in Newsweek magazine's annual ranking of the world's best hospitals but managed to remain in the top 10.
SGH was ranked eighth in the survey of 1,600 hospitals in 21 countries, with the National University Hospital (NUH) in 31st place. The first survey last year looked at 1,000 hospitals in 11 countries.
The top three hospitals this year are all in the US: the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Japan's University of Tokyo Hospital, the only other Asian hospital to make the top 10 last year, fell to 18th, leaving SGH as the only Asian hospital among the top 10.
The ranking was based on recommendations by medical experts, patient polls and the hospitals' medical key performance indicators.
Newsweek said the 21 countries "were mainly selected based on standard of living/life expectancy, population size, number of hospitals and data availability".
The Asian countries assessed were India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
Asian hospitals that made the top 50 were Japan's St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo (16) and Kyoto University Hospital (45) as well as Asan Medical Centre (37) and Samsung Medical Centre (42), both in South Korea.
The magazine said 70,000 medical professionals, including doctors, nurses and hospital managers, were invited to participate in an online survey and a survey on its website. It did not state how many took part.
Newsweek said: "Given the complexity of the various data sources, it was not possible to harmonise this data."
Instead, it combined the number of international recommendations with the national ranking to give a global score.
PATIENT SATISFACTION
It said official patient satisfaction data was not available in 13 countries, including Singapore, so evaluation from Google was used as a substitute.
It also said hospital key performance indicators were not available for nine countries, including Singapore.
The various scores were then validated by a global board of six medical experts - two from the United States, three from Europe and one from Israel.
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