In a recent report from the Joint Commission (America’s leading hospital accreditation board), a list was revealed of the top 405 health clinics to have responded to health issues like pneumonia and a heart attack.  The idea of the list was to find out which clinics were best prepared to deal with these situations.  Unfortunately the news wasn’t great.  Most of the hospitals in America with the top reputations (including John Hopkins) weren’t on the list.

Despite this, there have in general been improvements in how patient care facilities have responded over the last few years.  Over 12 million treatments were assessed and it was found that on a staggering 97 percent of occasions, hospitals followed directives correctly.  In 2002 this figure was only 82 percent.