Rush University Medical Center has been named one of the nation’s top 125 hospitals by Consumers’ Checkbook, a non-profit research organization.  Rush is one of only four hospitals in the Chicago area to make the list.

The list is published in the May/June 2009 issue of AARP The Magazine. Top hospitals were selected from 1,467 acute-care facilities in and around the nation’s 53 largest metropolitan areas.

Criteria for selection included ratings by physicians and patients, major medical school affiliation, government statistics and data on death and complication rates for various medical and surgical cases, Leapfrog Group safety standards and measures of proper tests and procedures.

82 percent of doctors surveyed rated Rush as very good or excellent compared to the average of 35 percent for all hospitals surveyed. The full data compiled for the survey is available in Consumer Checkbook’s Consumer’s Guide to Hospitals.

Consumer’s Checkbook is published by The Center for the Study of Services, an independent, nonprofit consumer organization founded in 1974. The center’s purpose is to conduct and encourage studies of the quality of consumer services available to the public and ways to improve these services.

An interactive map of the full list of hospitals is available at www.aarpmagazine.org/health.

About Rush University Medical Center

Rush University Medical Center includes the 674-bed (staffed) hospital; the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center; and Rush University (Rush Medical College, College of Nursing, College of Health Sciences and the Graduate College).