How to Use This Hospital Directory
This directory covers every hospital that submits quality data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — 5,426 facilities across 56 states and U.S. territories. Our Safety Score for each facility is a weighted composite of five clinical performance domains derived from the 2024 CMS Hospital Compare dataset: hospital-acquired infection rates, patient safety indicators, 30-day mortality outcomes, readmission rates, and patient experience surveys.
The most straightforward way to use this resource: select your state, identify hospitals within a reasonable travel distance for your planned care, and compare their scores. For planned procedures, prioritize Grade A and B hospitals (scores of 6.5 and above). For emergency care, always go to the nearest ER regardless of score.
Understanding the National Picture: What CMS 2024 Data Shows
The national average SafeHospitals USA Safety Score across all 5,426 rated facilities is 4.7/10. The distribution is not uniform: only 1 hospitals nationally achieve a Grade A rating, and 211 achieve Grade B. This means roughly 4% of U.S. hospitals are performing above the "average" threshold — a reflection of how demanding the composite scoring criteria are when applied consistently across five clinical domains.
Of the 5,426 facilities in this database, 4,499 — 83% — maintain active emergency departments. The remainder are specialty hospitals, psychiatric facilities, critical access hospitals, and long-term acute care facilities that do not provide general emergency services.
Critical Access Hospitals: A Special Note
Approximately 1,300 of the hospitals in this directory are designated Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) — rural facilities with 25 or fewer acute care beds, located at least 35 miles from the nearest hospital. CAHs operate under different CMS certification requirements and serve communities where the alternative to a lower-rated hospital is often no hospital at all.
When reviewing scores for rural Critical Access Hospitals, apply appropriate context: these facilities serve essential functions for their communities despite resource constraints that limit their ability to achieve the same scale of quality infrastructure as large urban medical centers. Compare them primarily within their peer group, not against major academic medical centers.
State-by-State Hospital Performance
Hospital quality varies significantly by state — a reflection of state-level healthcare regulations, Medicaid expansion status, healthcare workforce availability, and local healthcare market dynamics. States with larger numbers of Academic Medical Centers and teaching hospitals (Massachusetts, Minnesota, California) tend to have more high-performing facilities in the top quartile. Rural-dominated states face structural challenges in maintaining quality infrastructure due to smaller patient volumes and workforce recruitment difficulties.
Our state pages provide state-specific analysis including average scores, top-performing facilities, and city-by-city breakdowns. We recommend starting with your state page before drilling down to individual hospital profiles.
About the CMS Data Source
All scores on this site derive from the CMS Hospital Compare dataset — the federal government's comprehensive quality reporting system for Medicare-certified facilities. Hospitals are required to submit quality data to CMS as a condition of Medicare participation. This is not voluntary or self-reported marketing data — it is regulated quality measurement subject to CMS auditing and validation.
The current dataset reflects the 2024 CMS data release, verified and processed by our data team on July 15, 2025. We recalculate scores annually when CMS publishes updated data. Individual hospital scores may change significantly between data releases as quality performance improves or declines.
For the most current data on any specific hospital, we recommend cross-referencing our scores with the hospital's direct CMS profile at medicare.gov/care-compare.