Newswise — Houston Methodist Hospital, formerly known as The Methodist Hospital, ranked among the country’s top hospitals in 12 specialties in U.S. News & World Report’s 2013 America’s “Best Hospitals” issue, and again was named the No. 1 hospital in Texas.

The Methodist Hospital System is changing its name to Houston Methodist to differentiate its nationally regarded network of hospitals from others in the country.

"Over the past few years, Methodist has grown into a powerful presence on our nation’s health care landscape—as evidenced by our U.S. News rankings,” said Marc Boom, M.D., president and CEO of Houston Methodist. “We are proud to be from Houston, a city known for its outstanding medical facilities. Our name change calls attention to our outstanding patient care and academic mission and how we are leading medicine.”

In this recent U.S News ranking, Houston Methodist Hospital also ranked No. 1 in the Houston area in the magazine’s Best Metro Area Hospitals list. Houston Methodist San Jacinto Hospital and Houston Methodist Willowbrook both ranked No.8 in the metro area and No. 24 in the state.

The hospitals ranked nationally by the magazine received a score that weighs reputation, mortality and a group of care-related factors such as nursing and technology. Each specialty lists the 50 highest-scoring hospitals. In all, there are about 5,000 hospitals eligible for the rankings, and only 147 were ranked as one of the nation’s best hospitals. Houston Methodist Hospital ranked in the following specialties: cancer (40), cardiology & heart surgery (14), diabetes & endocrinology (26), gastroenterology (12), geriatrics (27), gynecology (22), nephrology (28), neurology & neurosurgery (11), ophthalmology (13), orthopedics (25), pulmonology (23), and urology (28).

The rankings are online at http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.

For more information on Houston Methodist, see www.methodisthealth.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.