RELEASE ON RECEIPT



                                   Contact: Marguerite Beck

     CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 13 -- For the first time, the University of 
Virginia's Cancer Center is ranked among the top 40 cancer centers in the 
country by U.S. News & World Report in their "1995 America's Best Hospitals" 
guide, due to appear in the magazine's July 17 edition.
	In addition, three other U.Va. medical departments are ranked among 
the top 40 in the nation in their fields and two are ranked in the top 20.
	"Any institution listed among the top 40 medical centers in any 
specialty should be considered a leading center," the editors said.	
	U.Va. departments or divisions listed in the new guide, and their 
rankings among specialist colleagues nationwide, are: Otolaryngology, 12; 
Endocrinology, 15; Gastroenterology, 22; Cancer, 27; Urology, 34; and 
Gynecology, 38.
	In its sixth annual edition of "America's Best Hospitals," U.S. 
News, in conjunction with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), 
objectively assessed hospital care for the 12 specialties listed in the 
guide. NORC, a noted social-science research group at the University of 
Chicago, mailed confidential questionnaires to a geographic cross-section of 
the 150 board-certified  physicians in each of 16 specialties for a total of 
2,400 physicians.  To determine the rankings, the magazine used data from 
three years of the its reputational surveys and two years of death-rate 
statistics published by the federal Health Care Financing Administration, 
with up to nine categories of information related to quality. The methodology
was refined this year to use data even more specific to each specialty.
	"I'm pleased that others are recognizing what we here have long known: 
the University of Virginia Medical Center is one of the outstanding medical 
centers in the world," said Dr. Robert W. Cantrell, acting vice president 
and provost for health sciences.
	U.S. News said the survey is the only one that objectively ranks the 
quality of hospitals on a nationwide basis.
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                                                       July 13, 1995