We all expect our hometown hospitals to provide excellent medical care, but now, that care is being recognized in a big way. Five area hospitals have made the national rankings of the country's top health care providers.

"I think that Rochester is the standard across the nation," said Ronald Kirshner, M.D.

Dr. Kirshner has worked in Rochester hospitals his entire career, since 1979. He's also traveled the country for medical speaking engagements and consulting.

"Turns out that I have two brothers that are heart surgeons, and they work in different areas of the country. They don't have anything close to what we have here in Rochester," said Kirshner, RGH Cardiothoracic Surgery Chief.

Rochester General Hospital consistently ranks among the best for heart care. This year, Carechex ranked RGH fourth for major cardiac surgery – up there with such prestigious names as Cleveland Clinic and Duke University. RGH also ranked 15th for Heart Attack Care.

"Patient satisfaction is a really important part of what CareChex is all about, and we rate very, very highly for patient satisfaction," Kirshner said.

Other hospitals ranked equally high in other forms of care. Highland Hospital ranked number two in the country for Women's Care, while Strong Hospital rated 7th for its Trauma Care, and 20th in brain surgery.

And both Highland and Strong sent us statements about their rankings. Highland officials said:

"It is gratifying to be recognized for our women’s health services, and we are proud of the high quality care our employees and physicians provide to women in our community every day. Highland Hospital is a leader in the Greater Rochester community for our Maternity, Breast Imaging and Gynecologic Oncology services. We constantly measure the progress and quality of these programs by state and federal standards to ensure our patients continue to receive excellent care."

And Strong officials, more cautious about their Carechex rankings:

"“We know that consumers watch all available quality information and construct comparisons as they make important decisions about their health and health care providers. We welcome those comparisons but caution that there is varying quality among the numerous report cards that are available to the public – and often different report cards draw opposite conclusions about how well institutions perform. And this report card relies heavily on information gathered from hospital submitted bills rather than actual clinical information from patient records.

We put the greatest faith in the government-sponsored information – for example, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) National Health Safety Network (NHSN) – which we believe has the most rigorous methodology and gathers real clinical information about infection complications from across the U.S. While we urge consumers to be active participants in their care, we suggest they consider report card quality data as just one tool in their decision-making process, which should include consultation with their own physician.”

Unity Hospital was also ranked highly for heart attack care and general cardiac care.