WASHINGTON – The AARP has posted the results of a national survey in which physicians gave their top choices for "out-of-town" hospitals based on specialty.

The list was compiled by the nonprofit Consumers' Checkbook and coincides with the release of the May/June issue of AARP The Magazine, which features information for consumers deciding whether to travel away from home for medical care.

Consumers' Checkbook surveyed physicians from across the United States and collected 140,000 ratings of hospitals in their own communities. The nonprofit also asked doctors whether, and where, they would recommend patients seeking care in other communities for extremely difficult cases of heart conditions, cancer aor other ailments.

AARP intends the list as a guide to "appropriate hospitals" if patients decide they need to travel outside their hometown for care. AARP The Magazine has also debuted an online interactive map listing the top-ranked hospitals in the United States by geographic area.

The survey was part of the research for a new book from Consumers' Checkbook called Consumers' Guide to Hospitals, which uses volumes of government safety statistics and data on death and complication rates, along with survey results, to compare and rank hospitals in the country's 53 largest metro areas.

When asked where they were most likely to send patients with extremely difficult cases, physicians surveyed by Consumers' Checkbook named the following hospitals:

Heart, General

• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, Mass.
• New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, New York, N.Y.
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.
• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass.
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.
• Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, Calif.
• Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Houston, Tex.

Cancer, General

• The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Tex.
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y.
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Mass.
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• City of Hope, Duarte, Calif.
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.
• Duke University Hospital, Durham, N.C.
• Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y.

Mystery Diagnoses

• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

Neurosurgery

• Duke University Hospital, Durham, N.C.
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• University of California San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, Calif.
• Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

Eyes

• Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami, Miami, Fla.
• Wills Eye Institute, Philadelphia, Pa.
• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.
• Wilmer Eye Institute, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.