HealthGrades, a rating organization, has named “America’s 50 best hospitals,” and Baltimore appears to have done well:

Franklin Square Hospital Center, Greater Baltimore Medical Center and Good Samaritan Hospital all made the list. Hospitals were located in 28 cities in 19 states. West Palm Beach, Fla., had the most hospitals with six. Cleveland and Chicago were next with four.

I’m always a little unsure about these lists, especially when some of the top-rated hospitals in the country aren’t ranked -- though, some city hospitals don’t make lists like these because they have way higher Medicare/Medicaid population and way more sickly patients and complicated cases.

But HealthGrades says this ranking used risk-adjusted mortality and complication rates, which means they took into account the different levels of patient illness. The hospitals also needed to meet minimum patient volumes and range of services provided.

They said patients at these hospitals had a nearly 30 percent lower risk of death and 3 percent lower rate of complications. HealthGrades study found that if all U.S. hospitals had performed at this level, more than a half million Medicare deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2009.

See the full list of hospitals at HealthGrades.com.