When healthcare professionals around the world name the academic medical centers they would recommend to a patient, a medical student or a research partner, they keep pointing to the same few corners of the U.S. map.

Brand Finance's Global Top 250 Hospitals 2026 report, based on a survey of 2,500 practicing healthcare professionals across 30 countries, places 29 North American hospitals in the global top 100. Twenty-five are from the U.S. and four are from Canada. Six of the global top 10 are North American, led for a second straight year by Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Where those twenty-five U.S. hospitals sit is telling. Twenty-one are in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, California, or the Midwest. Boston and New York City account for three each. The South has four entries, including MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas System in Texas, Duke University Hospital in North Carolina, and Emory in Atlanta.

Much of the rest of the country is missing. No hospital based in Florida, the Pacific Northwest or the Mountain West makes the top 100. Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Seattle's UW Medicine and Salt Lake City's University of Utah Health appear only in the 101-250 band. No Denver hospital appears in the 250 at all, and Dallas is represented only indirectly through the University of Texas System's entry.

"These aren't medical deserts. Many of these regions have outstanding hospitals doing nationally important work, yet they go unrecognized," said Alfred DuPuy, managing director, North America, Brand Finance. "What they have is a reputation gap.

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