“…the aim of the Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals List: to cut through the perception juggernaut—a “prestige bias,” if you will, that often helps some hospitals with loftier reputations and more ample funding appear better than they truly are, even as it hides the hard-won successes and steady performance of lesser-known systems. On this year’s list are names you might expect. Two California stalwarts, for instance—Stanford Hospital and UCLA Medical Center—are indeed among the country’s best-performing teaching hospitals when measured on clinical outcomes and other objective criteria. But then you might be surprised to learn that St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor Hospital also has world-class stats where it counts. It boasts a remarkably low rate of risk-adjusted patient mortality, according to government figures. That’s true both while patients are undergoing treatment in the hospital and after they’re sent home. Average lengths of hospital stays, meanwhile—again, adjusted for the severity of the illness—are lower at St. Joe’s too. So is the average inpatient cost (by a lot). No wonder patients themselves give the Michigan hospital consistently high marks in the long-running HCAHPS (or, familiarly, “H-caps”) survey conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)…”