Baltimore is the U.S. city with the best hospital care, according to a comprehensive study of patient death and complication rates at hospitals nationwide.

HealthGrades, which describes itself as the leading provider of information to help consumers make informed decisions about physicians and hospitals, identified hospitals performing in the top 5% nationwide across 26 medical procedures and diagnoses, then ranked cities by the highest percentage of those distinguished hospitals.

Baltimore had nine top-performing hospitals out of 19 eligible in the study. Rounding out the top 10 markets for hospital care were Phoenix-Prescott, Ariz.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Richmond, Va.; Cincinnati; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; St. Louis; Hartford-New Haven, Conn.; and Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo, Mich.

The complete list of the top cities for hospital care and all designated Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence is available at http://bit.ly/zPoxTT.

The leading cities can claim almost half their hospitals provide the highest level of care. For example, 47% of hospitals in Baltimore provided that high level of care, along with 44% in Phoenix-Prescott and 43% in Cedar Rapids and Richmond.

Distinguished Hospitals appear in 38 states and had a 30.07% lower risk-adjusted mortality rate and a 1.86% lower risk-adjusted in-hospital complication rate among Medicare beneficiaries than all other hospitals.

If all hospitals performed at the level of the Distinguished Hospitals, according to HealthGrades, they could have saved the lives of 165,704 Medicare patients and avoided 6,800 in-hospital complications during a three-year period.