Most of the ink and airtime locally that’s devoted to the health care industry is about UP Health System-Marquette. And not unreasonably, with the huge hospital construction project ongoing and the fact the Marquette facility is a regional referral center.

But that doesn’t mean top health care services aren’t dispensed at the smaller surrounding hospitals. A prestigious recent award picked up by UPHS-Bell attests to that fact. Bell, it was announced last week, has been named one of the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the United States by The Chartis Center for Rural Health.

Regarded as one of the industry’s most significant designations of performance excellence, the annual Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals Award is based upon the results of the Hospital Strength Index from iVantage Health Analytics, according to a press release from the hospital

“We are very pleased to be honored as one of the top rural hospitals in the country,” Mitch Leckelt, CEO of UPHS-Bell, said in the release. “I would like to thank all of our employees, volunteers and medical staff who have made this possible through their hard work and dedication. It’s because of their tireless commitment to our patients and our community that we were able to be recognized as a premier critical access hospital.”

Now in its ninth year, the Hospital Strength Index leverages 50 rural-relevant indicators across eight pillars of hospital strength — such as inpatient market share, outpatient market share, cost, charge, quality, outcomes, patient perspective and financial stability — to determine an overall score for each hospital. Each of the index’s 50 indicators is culled from publicly available data sources.

Anyone who seeks treatment at Bell knows it’s an outstanding facility staffed by caring professionals. We are pleased it made this list.