Abstract
Introduction Despite the wide usage of U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) rankings of ophthalmology
hospitals among the public, residency applicants, and ophthalmologists, there is disagreement
in the literature on the role of quality of care, research productivity, and other
factors in the ranking system. This study investigated the association of U.S. News
ranking of ophthalmology hospitals and objective measures of research productivity.
Methods The 2020 U.S. News “Best Hospitals for Ophthalmology” ranking lists 38 hospitals
by reputation score and numerically ranks the top 12 institutions. For our analysis,
top 12 hospitals were classified as group A and the remaining 26 as group B. The Clinicaltrials.gov,
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures
and Results (RePORTER), and NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)
were systematically searched for total clinical trials, NIH funding, and the National
Eye Institute (NEI) funding for fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Faculty size and
the number of publications by ophthalmology faculty per hospital were recorded from
a previous study in 2016.
Results Independent measures of research productivity significantly associated with group
A status after multivariate logistic regression analysis were mean faculty Hirsch's
index (h-index) over 15 (odds ratio [OR]: 6.13, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [1.14–32.94])
and conducting five or more total clinical trials (OR: 8.77, 95% CI: [1.39–55.16]).
Conclusion This study suggests that the reputation-based U.S. News ranking may serve as a proxy
for an ophthalmology department's contribution to research measured by mean faculty
h-index and number of clinical trials.
Keywords
U.S. News - ophthalmology - academic ranking - research productivity
