Magazine ranks MUSC program highly

U.S. News and World Reports rates the Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center as one of the best in the country in treatment of digestive disorders.

The rankings will be published in the July 23 edition, which will reach newsstands Monday.

MUSC is listed as 24th out of 50 top facilities for treatment of digestive disorders, marking the fifth straight year that the specialty service was listed.

U.S. News has ranked top medical centers since 1990. This year the magazine considered data from 6,116 hospitals and listed 168 centers.

To be ranked, a hospital had to belong to the Council of Teaching Hospitals, be affiliated with a medical school or have at least nine technology services of a prescribed list of 17.

A hospital also had to perform a specified number of defined procedures during the past three years or be named by at least one physician in U.S. News surveys in the past three years.

Those qualifying were then scored based on reputation, mortality, nursing, technology and other factors related to patient care. The magazine lists the 50 hospitals with the highest scores in each of 13 specialties.