The World's BEST Hospitals 2022

This year’s expanded ranking of more than 2,200 premier destinations for general medical care around the globe and throughout the U.S.

- DANA NEELEY

THE WORLD'S HOSPITALS HAVE BEEN THE FRONT LINE IN medicine's constantly evolving war against COVID-19 for two years now. For even the biggest and most established institutions, that has meant learning to adapt and improvise on the fly.

“We had to very rapidly convert beds to ICU beds, and close large sections of the hospital, then come up with staff to cover those beds, says David Bates, chief of general internal medicine and primary care at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital (No. 17 on Newsweek's Best Hospitals Global Leaders list). “There were also great challenges with managing our supply chain for things like ventilators and personal protective equipment.

Many medical institutions struggled with similar challenges over the course of the pandemic, but what has set the world's leading hospitals apart is their continued ability to deliver the highest-quality patient care and conduct critical medical research even as they focused on battling COVID. Indeed, as the fourth annual ranking of the World's Best Hospitals by Newsweek and Statista shows, consistency in excellence is the hallmark of these institutions, with familiar names dominating the list and top spots.

How do they do it, in the midst of a global pandemic that has turned the medical world upside down? The ability and drive to continually innovate is key—and top talent is at the heart of that. As Bates, one of the experts who provided guidance for the rankings, says, “Premier hospitals remain strong largely by attracting the best people, those who are focused on developing new approaches to care and making care better.”