Mayo Clinic in Phoenix tops Arizona hospitals for 14th straight year
Mayo Clinic in Phoenix has made it 14 straight years as the top hospital in Arizona, according to the annual ranking by U.S. News & World Report.
In addition, Mayo Clinic in Arizona made it for the 10th straight year onto the 20-hospital unranked honor roll in the 2026-2027 Best Hospitals rankingsreleased Tuesday. The honor roll includes those demonstrating exceptional breadth and depth of clinical excellence, U.S. News said.
While Mayo Clinic was the only hospital in the Grand Canyon State to make the honor roll, it was one of six in Arizona included among the magazine’s best regional hospitals.
Led by Mayo, the others on the regional hospitals list — in order of Arizona ranking — were HonorHealth Scottsdale Shea Medical Center, Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, HonorHealth Scottsdale Thompson Peak Medical Center, Banner-University Medical Center (in Tucson) and Banner Boswell Medical Center (in Sun City).
Of the leading Arizona institutions, Mayo Clinic was nationally ranked in several medical specialties, including Gastroenterology & GI Surgery (No. 13), Geriatrics (No. 18), Cardiology, Heart & Vascular Surgery (No. 19), Neurology & Neurosurgery (No. 19), Pulmonology & Lung Surgery (No. 22), Cancer (No. 29), Diabetes & Endocrinology (No. 30), Urology (No. 30) and Orthopedics (No. 33).
Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix also had a national ranking, coming in at No. 49 in Geriatrics.
Both the Phoenix and Tucson campuses of Banner-University Medical were listed among the nation’s Best Regional Hospitals for Community Access. That list honors regional hospitals that consistently provided high-quality care to populations including typically underserved and vulnerable groups, U.S. News said.
U.S. News said its evaluations are based on data from more than 800 million records of patient care, looking at risk-adjusted mortality rates, preventable complications and patient experience, among other measures.
Arizona a leader for new hospital construction
The U.S. News rankings come on the heels of another recent study that found Arizona has built the third-most new hospitals in the nation since 2001, with an addition of 12 facilities.
Between 2000 and 2026, there were 78 total hospitals recorded with 23 openings (19 system-owned and four independent) and 11 closures (six system-owned and five independent), according to a study from Yale University. In that same time period, Arizona’s hospital beds per thousand residents fell from 1.9 to 1.7 — an 11% decline. The figures cover 2001 to 2023 since openings were not tracked systematically in 2000 or after 2023.
The most openings were in Gilbert and Mesa, with three hospitals each. The most openings overall were in 2008 (four). The most closures occurred in Phoenix (three) with two of those in 2007 on the edge of the Great Recession.
That’s according to data from Yale’s Health Care Affordability Lab, which launched the Closures and Openings Explorer tool this month. The free interactive tool shows where hospitals have opened and closed in Arizona and nationwide from 2000 through June 2026 — at the state, county and commuting-zone level.
Lab researchers manually verified hospitals against state filings, financial statements, hospital websites and news reports, per the study.
Zack Cooper, the director of the Health Care Affordability Lab at Yale, said that he expected to see more hospital closures than openings when Yale Lab began the research. Although that assumption was valid, the study also found that for every 10 hospitals that closed, eight opened.
“That surprised me, and is just one example of the insights this tool can help others make,” Cooper said. “It’s especially important as communities navigate the implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its potential effects on hospitals.”
Among the proposed new facility development projects in the Valley:
- In the Banner Health network a $750 million, 300-bed Scottsdale hospital had its phase one groundbreaking in May 2025 with an anticipated completion and opening in early 2027 of its Banner Health Center plus, according to Banner’s website.
- An independent proposed project from Where Hope Lives — a Phoenix-based nonprofit for young survivors of sex trafficking — is to build a hospital in the West Valley for its clients. The facility would have a 170-bed capacity with a development cost of $60 million.
Among states with the most openings, the Grand Canyon State ranks in the top five behind Texas (40) and Colorado (15) and ahead of Florida (11) and Nevada (11). The states with the most closures were California (41), New York (39) and Pennsylvania (28).