There are thousands of high-performing ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) operating across the United States.
But some cities and states have far more high-performing ASCs than others, a new industry ranking from U.S. News & World Report suggests.
U.S. News & World Report released its Best Ambulatory Surgery Centers ratings for 2025 on Tuesday. To compile its list of top ASCs, the organization evaluated 4,357 surgery centers in four specialty areas: colonoscopy and endoscopy, ophthalmology, orthopedics and spine, and urology.
“Ambulatory surgery centers were evaluated based on objective, risk-adjusted measures of their patients’ outcomes, including how successfully they avoided complications, ER visits, unplanned hospitalizations and other undesirable outcomes,” U.S. News & World Report explained in a press release. “To ensure fair comparisons among ambulatory surgery centers, the analysis accounted for each patient’s pre-existing conditions and other risk factors.”
When it comes to states that are rich in top-notch ASCs, California checked in at No. 1, with 95 best-in-class surgery centers. Florida and Texas followed California at No. 2 and No. 3, with 64 and 54 high-performing ASCs, respectively.
Other states with a large number of high-performing ASCs included Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, New York, Arizona, Ohio, New Jersey and Washington.
Illinois as a state wasn’t highlighted for having several top ASCs, but Chicago was for having several top surgery centers relative to other major metropolitan markets. Chicago had 17 top ASCs, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Baltimore had 19 high-performing ASCs. Meanwhile, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., each had 18 high-performing ASCs.
New York City and Los Angeles each had nearly 40 high-performing ASCs, according to U.S. News & World Report.
“U.S. News’ 2025 Best Ambulatory Surgery Centers ratings highlight the top-performing surgery centers in the procedures evaluated, giving consumers the confidence to make informed, data-driven decisions when choosing an ASC,” Chelsey Wen, senior health data analyst at U.S. News, said in the press release. “Facilities ranked ‘best’ by U.S. News demonstrate on average up to 35% fewer emergency department visits compared with all ASCs evaluated by U.S. News.”
This year marked the second time that U.S. News & World Report released such rankings. The first iteration of the project came out in 2024.
