The top hospitals in the U.S. are focused on utilizing technology to identify safety risks early and fostering a culture where patient safety is a shared responsibility.
Among more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals evaluated on patient safety and outcomes measures, U.S. News & World Report named 20 hospitals on its Honor Roll. Measures include risk-adjusted mortality rates, preventable complications and level of nursing care.
Quality and safety leaders at eight of US News & World Report's 2025-26 Best Hospitals said their priorities for the rest of the year include expanding the use of predictive analytics, AI-powered monitoring and digital engagement tools to prevent harm, while strengthening team communication and psychological safety.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Paul Casey, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Rush University System for Health (Chicago): We remain dedicated to reducing any potential of adverse events for our patients throughout the health system. We believe this is best accomplished by keeping patients engaged in their care throughout their care journey. So in addition to our regular team-based rounding, we are focused on digital engagement with our patients throughout their care journey. This includes a newly developed myRush app and broader Rush Connect digital experience. We also see AI as a key tool to surface insights for our teams to ensure we continue to provide the highest quality care for Rush patients.
Victor Herrera, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer of AdventHealth's Central Florida Division: As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, we're committed to rapidly adopting the latest innovations. That's why we're transforming every hospital room into a smart room, equipped with telemedicine, AI-powered monitoring and digital tools that elevate safety at the bedside.
This will enable continuous virtual observation, early detection of clinical deterioration, and seamless communication between care teams and patients. With predictive analytics, we're turning data into immediate action -- shifting from reactive safety to proactive prevention before problems arise, at scale.
Amy Lu, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality Officer of UCSF Health (San Francisco): Our patient safety goals for the remainder of 2025 focus on improving the reliability of serious safety event reviews, strengthening psychological safety for our teams, and deepening patient and family engagement. We're aligning operational accountability with system learning, improving our CMS PSSM (Patient Safety Structural Measure) adoption, improving consistency of leader rounding, and renewing our commitment to making safety a shared responsibility.
Paul Maggio, MD. Chief Quality Officer of Stanford (Calif.) Medicine: At Stanford Health Care, how we define our safety goals is grounded in both commonly benchmarked metrics -- such as hospital-acquired infections, falls and serious safety events -- but we also emphasize areas that are uniquely critical to our environment, such as periprocedural safety workflows and care transitions.
Just as importantly, we view safety as a reflection of our culture. We're actively building a culture where near-miss reporting is valued, psychological safety is prioritized and just culture principles are embedded. One of our key organizational goals is to increase the percentage of reported near-miss events -- a signal that staff feel safe speaking up and see value in proactive learning. This cultural commitment, paired with rigorous data and front-line insight, drives our approach to patients and staff.
Katherine Noe, MD, PhD. Chair of Quality for Mayo Clinic in Arizona (Phoenix): Two of our highest priorities for 2025 are strengthening our tiered safety huddles through expanded use of digital visual management boards in all hospital units and launching internally developed AI-based prediction tools to advance patient safety and reduce workload on staff.
Edward Seferian, MD. Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality at The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore): At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, patient safety remains our top priority. During the second half of 2025, we are focused on sustaining gains in reducing hospital-acquired infections by collaborating closely with front-line clinicians, nurses and staff whose work is key to identifying improvement opportunities. We also continue to advance efforts to prevent potentially avoidable conditions, such as falls and venous thromboembolism, through innovative strategies including virtual nursing support, implementation of real time and nurse leader dashboards, and exploration of enhanced predictive risk assessment models.
Additionally, we are strengthening safety for patients, visitors and staff by using proactive risk assessment tools to guide targeted interventions for issues such as workplace violence. These goals reflect our continued commitment to delivering safe, high-quality care to patients from our community, region and beyond.
Tom Sequist, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Mass General Brigham (Boston): At Mass General Brigham, we're focused on providing high-quality, personalized care that improves health outcomes at every one of our healthcare sites. With all teams across hospitals working together toward the same goal, we can make much more meaningful progress than when everyone is working independently, with different priorities, goals, strategies and measurement. Our goal as a High Reliability Organization (HRO) focuses on improving care in five areas: effective care, equitable care, efficient care, safe care and personalized experience.
Gail Vozzella, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive at Houston Methodist: We are committed to delivering unparalleled patient care. The anchor of that vision is an unwavering dedication to an evidence-based, innovative care model while treating our patients with integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence -- our I CARE Values.
A key success factor in consistently moving toward a safer environment is a focus on our workforce culture. We believe in investing in our physicians and all staff across the system utilizing a multitude of ways. This includes ensuring clearly communicating "why" changes are made, in particular when we're introducing innovation strategies.
Additionally, we foster an environment where all can speak up without fear if they have a safety concern. Accordingly, Houston Methodist leverages a data-first culture to proactively identify safety issues, streamline workflows, and elevate patient safety. From utilization of AI predictive modeling to trend data to monitoring deterioration from patient wearables, Houston Methodist embraces innovation to enhance patient safety. Safety metrics such as risk-adjusted mortality, hand hygiene, readmission rates and preventable infection rates are tracked monthly from front-line teams to the board level. Houston Methodist commits to keeping the patient at the center of all that we do.