U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in hospital rankings and consumer advice, has named Deborah Heart and Lung Center a 2025-2026 High Performing hospital for Arrhythmia, Heart Attack, Heart Bypass Surgery, Heart Failure and Pacemaker Implantation. This is the highest award a hospital can earn for U.S. News’ Best Hospitals Procedures & Conditions ratings.

The annual Procedures & Conditions ratings are designed to assist patients and their doctors in making informed decisions about where to receive care for challenging health conditions or elective procedures. Deborah Heart and Lung Center earned High Performing ratings for Arrhythmia, Heart Attack, Heart Bypass Surgery, Heart Failure and Pacemaker Implantation, in recognition of care that was significantly better than the national average, as measured by factors such as patient outcomes.

For the 2025-2026 U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals Procedures & Conditions ratings, more than 4,400 hospitals were evaluated across 15 adult specialties and 22 procedures and conditions. Only one third of them earned an award.

The U.S. News Procedures & Conditions methodology is based entirely on objective measures of quality such as survival rates, patient experience, and how successfully each hospital helps patients get back home.

Hospital Compare has information about the quality of care at over 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals across the country. You can use Hospital Compare to find hospitals and compare the quality of their care.

The information on Hospital Compare helps you make decisions about where you get your health care and encourages hospitals to improve the quality of care they provide.

Hospital Compare was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in collaboration with organizations representing consumers, hospitals, doctors, employers, accrediting organizations, and other federal agencies.

The Hospital Compare overall rating summarizes up to 57 quality measures across seven areas of quality into a single star rating for each hospital. Once reporting thresholds are met, a hospital’s overall rating is calculated using only those measures for which data are available. This may include as few as 9 or as many as 57 measures. The average is about 39 measures. Deborah has consistently achieved a rank in the top 10-20% of all hospitals nationwide and has achieved the status of “Top Hospital” for a number of quality measures.

Deborah Heart and Lung Center submits data to this national database for public reporting for the following performance measures:

• Mortality
• Safety of Care
• Readmission
• Patient Experience
• Effectiveness of Care
• Timeliness of Care
• Efficient Use of Medical Imaging

The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives of hospital care.

While many hospitals have collected information on patient satisfaction for their own internal use, until HCAHPS there was no national standard for collecting and publicly reporting information about patient experience of care that allowed valid comparisons to be made across hospitals locally, regionally and nationally.

Deborah Heart and Lung Center — New Jersey’s only specialty heart hospital — has earned a distinguished three-star rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for excellence in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, the highest possible rating for quality and patient outcomes. Deborah also received two-star ratings for aortic valve replacement (AVR), AVR + CABG, mitral valve repair/replacement (MVRR), and MVRR + CABG.

Fewer than 7% of cardiac programs nationwide achieve a three-star distinction from the STS, which is based on a rigorous analysis of quality and outcomes data from the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database — the most trusted and comprehensive resource for measuring heart surgery performance in the United States.

Out of 18 New Jersey hospitals performing open-heart surgery, only 13 choose to make their STS ratings public. At Deborah, transparency is at the heart of everything we do. We believe patients deserve access to clear, unbiased data when choosing where to receive care.

Our consistently high STS ratings reflect what matters most:

• Safer procedures backed by the latest evidence-based practices.
• Better outcomes thanks to continuous quality improvement initiatives.
• Peace of mind knowing your care team is benchmarked against the nation’s best.

Each color in this chart represents a specific New Jersey hospital, with Deborah in red.

• CABG: Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting
• AVR: Aortic Valve Replacement
• MVRR: Mitral Valve Repair/Replacement
• STS Public Reporting

Deborah is committed to delivering outstanding care for patients undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) in the Cath Lab overseen by our team of Interventional Cardiologists. As reported by the American College of Cardiology, Deborah’s PCI performance metrics reflect the highest standards in patient care and safety. In 2023, Deborah performed 733 PCI procedures and achieved a perfect 4 out of 4 stars on all measured quality metrics. These results highlight our dedication to following best practices and ensuring optimal outcomes for every patient.

Deborah Heart and Lung Center voluntarily completes the Leapfrog Survey for public reporting. In addition to scores on the survey, Leapfrog also assigns a Hospital Safety Grade. However, Deborah Heart and Lung Center is not assigned a safety grade because we are considered a specialty hospital and there is no safety grade for a specialty hospital. The Leapfrog Survey scores hospitals on the following measures:

• Inpatient care management
• Medication safety
• Hospital-acquired conditions

The Leapfrog Group is an organization comprised of over 170 companies, including Fortune 500 companies and large and small private and public organizations that provide health benefits for their employees, retirees, and dependents. Leapfrog Group spends nearly $67 billion each year on health care for over 36 million Americans in all 50 states. This Group represents a significant purchasing power in the healthcare industry, the purpose of which is to use the way they purchase health care to influence hospitals to improve the safety, quality, and affordability of healthcare for Americans. This is achieved by rewarding hospitals who successfully implement initiatives that improve health care safety, quality, and customer value.

Released in April 2025, the New Jersey Department of Health published performance data for the 18 hospitals licensed to perform cardiac surgeries in the state during 2021-2022. New Jersey is one of only five states that has issued reports on isolated Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG or bypass) surgery outcomes for hospitals and surgeons, and began reporting on patient mortality at the hospital and surgeon level in 1997.

Among these 18 hospitals, Deborah Heart and Lung Center’s surgical team ranked as the ninth busiest in New Jersey, handling nearly 325 cases. Patients traveled from 11 different New Jersey counties and four other states (New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) to undergo surgery at Deborah. According to the latest report, Deborah Heart and Lung Center achieved the lowest risk-adjusted patient mortality rate among all reporting hospitals, at 0.92% — a lower percentage indicating better outcomes.

The New Jersey Department of Health, in collaboration with the Cardiovascular Health Advisory Panel (CHAP), also released a comprehensive assessment of cardiac surgery outcomes across the state. The report analyzed data from 18 hospitals offering cardiac surgery in New Jersey, encompassing 18,658 patients who underwent open heart surgery. Deborah Heart and Lung Center is proud to announce it achieved the lowest open heart surgery mortality risk of all 18 hospitals. These outstanding results reflect the hospital’s unwavering focus on patient safety, precision and quality outcomes.

Hospitals submit data to the New Jersey Department of Health for public reporting as part of the State’s hospital quality performance initiative to provide information on hospital quality to patients, families, and healthcare professionals. Deborah Heart and Lung Center submits data to the New Jersey Department of Health public reporting division for the following performance measures:

• Heart Attack
• Pneumonia
• Surgical Care Improvement
• Heart Failure
• Stroke
• Safety Indicators
• Healthcare-Associated Infections

By earning accreditation, Deborah Heart and Lung Center has demonstrated it meets or exceeds patient safety standards set forth by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. DNV GL’s accreditation program is the only one to integrate the ISO 9001 Quality Management System with the Medicare Conditions of Participation. ISO 9001 is the world’s most trusted quality management system used by performance-driven organizations around the world to advance their quality and sustainability objectives.

DNV GL’s accreditation program, called NIAHO^® (Integrated Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations), involves annual hospital surveys and encourages hospitals to openly share information across departments and to discover improvements in clinical workflows and safety protocols.

DNV GL is a world-leading certification body that helps hospitals achieve excellence by improving quality and patient safety through hospital accreditation, managing infection risk, and management system certification and training. The DNV GL Group operates in more than 100 countries.

In 2025, Deborah Heart and Lung Center received credentialing from DNV as a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) Facility. This credentialing affirms the hospital’s readiness to provide the full spectrum of VAD Program services – including diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and patient and community education – while ensuring the ability to track and evaluate program outcomes effectively.