1

(tie) Cone Health¹

Greensboro

Beds: 802 | 2018 rank: 4 | CEO: Terry Akin

Cone has expanded from its flagship Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, which opened in 1953, to a six-hospital system that employs about 12,000 people. Recent investments include the $100 million, 196,000-square-foot Cone Health Women’s and Children’s Center, expected to open later this year at Cone Hospital’s main campus. Cone’s Triad Healthcare Network ranks among the top-performing Medicare accountable care organizations in the U.S., according to federal data. Launched in 2012, the network of about 2,000 providers deploys health care professionals to monitor patients after surgeries and other procedures, yielding fewer return visits.

Challenge: Cone faces increasing competition from larger Winston-Salem-based Novant Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health as the systems jockey in the Triad, which lacks the explosive growth of Charlotte and the Triangle.

1

(tie) UNC Rex Healthcare

Raleigh

Beds: 660 | 2018 rank: 2 |
President: Steve Burriss

It’s been three years since UNC Health Care changed the name of its Raleigh health system to UNC Rex Healthcare, 15 years after purchasing the not-for-profit organization. Since then, the university-led system has shown an innovative, growth-minded strategy. In 2012, it launched Rex Health Ventures, one of the nation’s first venture-capital funds run by a community hospital. It has made about a dozen investments. Construction will start this spring on a $65 million cancer center that is expected to open by early 2021, more than doubling space dedicated to cancer care.

Challenge: UNC Rex faces nimble Triangle-based competitors in WakeMed and Duke University Health as the region’s rapid population growth provides a steady stream of potential new customers.

METHODOLOGY: Business North Carolina’s 2019 Best Hospitals list is calculated by the hospitals’ performance in 25 metrics, including information provided by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We examine patient-satisfaction surveys, rates of commonly acquired hospital infections, and readmission and death rates for common procedures. Also considered are safety report cards from The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, and ratings from insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield and U.S. News & World Report. We rank the state’s adult, acute-care medical centers with at least 50 beds, excluding specialty and psychiatric hospitals.

Click here to view the 2019 list of North Carolina’s Best Hospitals.

¹ includes The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital (Greensboro, 517 beds), Wesley Long (Greensboro, 175 beds) and Annie Penn (Reidsville, 110 beds)