The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank, has named eight New York hospitals and four in Texas in its annual ranking of top 20 U.S. hospitals for community benefit.
To evaluate an organization’s community benefit spending, the institute equally weighed available metrics on financial assistance, Medicaid patient revenue and community investment, according to its methodology. Lown published the ranking March 16.
The institute measured the first two metrics using CMS data of hospital cost reports for fiscal year 2022, and assessed community investment through IRS tax filings from 2022 or the most recent year available.
“Financial assistance was adjusted for hospital patient services margin … on the assumption that financially healthy hospitals should be able to give back more in assistance,” according to Lown. The community investment metric includes subsidized health services, such as free clinics and “other services provided at a loss to the hospital,” community health improvement activities, such as health fairs and immunizations, contributions to community organizations, and activities that address health needs such as education and nutritious food.
A few days before Lown published the community benefit rankings, the American Hospital Association published its annual “Costs of Caring” report, which found hospital expenses grew 7.5% in 2025, more than twice the growth rate in hospital prices.
In years past, the AHA has commented on previous research and reports from Lown. Becker’s has reached out to the AHA and will update this article if more information becomes available.
Lown ranked 2,716 acute care hospitals, 882 critical access hospitals and 322 hospital systems for 2025-26.
These are the top 20 acute care hospitals recognized in this year’s ranking:
1. Valleywise Health Medical Center (Phoenix)
2. Parkland Health and Hospital System (Dallas)
3. Olive View-UCLA Medical Center (Sylmar, Calif.)
4. NYC Health+Hospitals/Bellevue (New York City)
5. Mount Sinai Hospital (Chicago)
6. NYC Health+Hospitals Elmhurst (N.Y.)
7. NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan (New York City)
8. NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln (New York City)
9. Hereford (Texas) Regional Medical Center
10. NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health (New York City)
11. St. Bernard Hospital (Chicago)
12. Palisades Medical Center (North Bergen, N.J.)
13. NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens (New York City)
14. University Health (San Antonio)
15. John Peter Smith Hospital (Fort Worth, Texas)
16. University Hospital (Newark, N.J.)
17. NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County (New York City)
18. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center
19. Holy Cross Hospital (Chicago)
20. St. Joseph’s Medical Center (New York City)
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