Scripps leads the San Diego region in orthopedics and ranks 10 places ahead of UC San Diego Health in diabetes and endocrinology, illustrating how specialty rankings can differ sharply from overall hospital standings.

UC San Diego Health holds U.S. News & World Report’s No. 1 overall hospital ranking in the San Diego metro area. Still, the picture changes when physicians and patients look at individual specialties.

In the 2026–27 Best Hospitals rankings, Scripps Health was ranked No. 1 in the San Diego region for orthopedic care, while Scripps Green Hospital placed No. 41 nationally in orthopedics. Orthopedics is not among UC San Diego Health’s eight nationally ranked top-50 specialties.

Scripps holds an even clearer numerical advantage in diabetes and endocrinology. Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla ranks No. 16 nationally, compared with No. 26 for UC San Diego Health, putting the Scripps hospital 10 positions ahead in the national specialty ranking.

The findings add context to UCSD’s broader showing. UC San Diego Health returned to the U.S. News national Honor Roll for 2026–27 and has held the No. 1 overall position in San Diego for seven consecutive years. It also shares the No. 1 ranking in California with Cedars-Sinai, Stanford Health Care, UCLA Health and UCSF Health.

But overall hospital rankings and specialty rankings measure different levels of performance. In orthopedics and diabetes and endocrinology, the latest rankings give Scripps an advantage over San Diego’s highest-ranked overall health system.

Year-over-year comparisons at Scripps require particular caution.

For 2025–26, U.S. News evaluated Scripps Green Hospital and Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla as a combined entity called Scripps La Jolla Hospitals. That combined program ranked No. 18 nationally in orthopedics and No. 13 in diabetes and endocrinology.

For 2026–27, U.S. News evaluated the two hospitals separately for the first time in more than a decade. Scripps Green received the No. 41 orthopedic ranking, while Scripps Memorial La Jolla received the No. 16 diabetes and endocrinology ranking.

Those year-over-year rank changes are therefore not directly comparable and should not be described as declines in Scripps’ clinical performance. The hospitals being evaluated changed, and U.S. News also revised portions of its methodology.

Among the changes, risk-adjusted outcomes received greater weight across adult specialties, outpatient outcomes became more important, and certain orthopedic procedures performed in hospital outpatient departments were added to orthopedic volume calculations. U.S. News also introduced regional specialty rankings for orthopedics, cancer, cardiology and rehabilitation.

For physicians, the results are a reminder that a health system’s overall ranking does not automatically translate into leadership across every specialty. Rankings also should not substitute for patient-specific referral decisions, which depend on factors such as physician expertise, clinical outcomes, procedure experience, disease complexity and individual patient needs.

Available ranking information does not establish how much of Scripps’ year-over-year movement reflects separation of the two hospitals, methodology changes, changes in underlying performance, or movement by competing hospitals. The precise 2026–27 regional orthopedic positions of Sharp Memorial Hospital and Sharp Grossmont Hospital also remain to be independently confirmed.