More skepticism is needed on the matter of institutional rankings, be they for colleges or hospitals. A study in Health Affairs notes that four services that publish hospital ratings for consumers strongly disagree.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “no single hospital received high marks from all four services—U.S. News & World Report, Consumer Reports, the Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades—and only 10 percent of the 844 hospitals that were rated highly by one service received top marks from another, the study published Monday found.”

”The measures were so divergent that 27 hospitals were simultaneously rated among the nation’s best by one service and among the worst by another.”

Yet we Americans love rankings!