Garrett Regional Medical Center (GRMC) was one of four WVU Medicine hospitals recognized on Forbes' newest list: Top Hospitals 2026. The other three hospitals were Camden Clark Medical Center in Parkersburg, J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, and United Hospital Center in Bridgeport.
To compile the list, Forbes and Inovalon, a healthcare data and analytics firm, collaborated with nationally recognized measurement experts, physicians, statisticians, health policy researchers, and patient advocates.
Collectively, they developed the Forbes Top Hospitals methodology, “which is based on validated healthcare quality measures extracted from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Provider Data Catalog (PDC). These publicly reported measures — which assess key aspects of care, including patient outcomes, hospital best practices, value, and patient experience — were chosen because they have undergone a thorough national review process that includes testing and input from leaders in the healthcare community, establishing these metrics as reliable and statistically sound.”
Patient outcomes, including readmission rates, infection, and mortality, were weighted more heavily than other metrics due to the substantial influence they have on determining quality of services.
In addition, because social drivers of health – income, education, and access to transportation – impact health outcomes, Forbes adjusted their outcome measures in the communities surrounding each hospital “to produce a more level comparison of hospital quality despite differences between any given hospital’s location and patients.”
The team started with the 5,400 general acute care hospitals listed in the CMS PDC and narrowed them down to approximately 2,500 that met the inclusion criteria. Those hospitals were then analyzed, and 253 received an overall ranking of five stars, while 509 received an overall ranking of four stars. The 762 hospitals make up the first-ever Forbes Top Hospitals list.
All four WVU Medicine hospitals included on the list earned an overall ranking of four stars.
“Only 14 percent of the original list of hospitals made it onto the Top Hospitals list, and four of them are part of the WVU Medicine family. That’s quite the feat, and we couldn’t be prouder,” Albert L. Wright, Jr., president and CEO of the WVU Health System, said. “Our patients are the top priority in everything we do across our network of hospitals and clinics, and it is incredibly satisfying to be acknowledge for our efforts.”
To view the Forbes Top Hospitals list, click here.
For media inquiries: Angela S. Jones, WVU Health System Assistant Vice President of Media and Marketing Communications - angela.jones1@wvumedicine.org.
About the WVU Health System: The West Virginia University Health System is West Virginia’s largest health system and the state’s largest employer with more than 3,400 licensed beds, 4,600 providers, 35,000 employees, and $7 billion in total operating revenues. The Health System is comprised of 25 hospitals – including J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital, an 880-bed academic medical center, and the 150-bed WVU Medicine Golisano Children’s Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia – and five institutes. To learn more, visit WVUMedicine.org.
