Brookings Health Again Earns Three Top Honors 🏆
- Spring 2025
Brookings Health System was named a Top 20 Rural Community Hospital in the United States by the National Rural Health Association (NRHA). The health system ranked 99.9 percent on the winter 2025 Chartis Rural Hospital Performance INDEX, the tool used to recognize the Top 20. Brookings Health was the highest scoring rural prospective payment system (PPS) hospital among peer rural and community hospitals across the nation.
“Our team is the key driver to our continued success year-after-year,” said President and CEO Jason Merkley. “Their focus to provide world-class care with the best possible outcomes to every patient, every time drives the high-quality, compassionate, personalized health care our community has come to know and trust.”
This is the eighth time since the award was established in 2016 that the NRHA has named Brookings Health to the elite Top 20 list. The health system will be recognized at an awards ceremony during NRHA’s Rural Hospital Innovation Summit on May 22 in Atlanta, GA. The NRHA honors the 20 highest-ranked PPS hospitals in the country based on an evaluation by the Chartis Rural Hospital Performance INDEX®.
For the tenth consecutive year, Brookings Health System has been included by The Chartis Center for Rural Health on the Top 100 Rural & Community Hospitals list. The annual recognition program honors outstanding performance among the nation’s rural hospitals and is also based on the results of the Chartis Rural Hospital Performance INDEX®.
“Since the Top 100 Rural & Community Hospital list was established in 2016, Brookings Health has been honored and recognized as one of the best rural and community hospitals in the nation,” said President and CEO Jason Merkley. “Our consistent performance for the past decade is attributable to our team’s commitment to providing high-quality, compassionate, personalized healthcare for our community.”
The INDEX is based entirely on publicly available data sets and is the industry’s most comprehensive and objective assessment of rural provider performance. It benchmarks rural and community hospitals on eight pillars of performance: inpatient market share, outpatient market share, quality, outcomes, patient perspective, cost, charge, and financial efficiency.
Additionally, Brookings Health has been recognized as a five-year champion to Newsweek’s list of World’s Best Hospitals. This prestigious award is presented by Newsweek and Statista Inc., the world-leading statistics portal and industry ranking provider. The awards list can currently be viewed on Newsweek’s website.
“We are proud to again be the only South Dakota hospital outside of Sioux Falls to be recognized by Newsweek and Statista,” said President and CEO Jason Merkley. “Our team’s dedication to delivering high-quality, compassionate, personalized health care has consistently put us on the same list as such elite healthcare providers as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and The Johns Hopkins Hospital, proving the best care starts at home.”
Brookings Health ranks 224 out of 420 of the Best Hospitals 2025 in the United States. In addition, Brookings Health has received a Patient Experience Award which recognizes hospitals with an outstanding performance on the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) HCAHPS survey for patient satisfaction. Newsweek and Statista developed a complex methodology to ensure the quality and validity of the ranking. Four data sources were used for the evaluation:
- Hospital Recommendations from Peers: an online survey sent to tens of thousands doctors, hospital managers and health care professionals in 30 countries
- Patient Experience: surveys measuring patient satisfaction with hospitals and the quality of care the patient received
- Hospital Quality Metrics: medical indicators such as data on quality of care for treatments, hygiene measures, patient safety and wait times
- Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): surveys measuring patient satisfaction with hospitals
The World's Best Hospitals 2025 list recognizes the best medical institutions across 30 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Find more information about Brookings Health System’s high-quality care at brookingshealth.org/Quality.