https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2025/12/15/best-companies

Forbes last month released its second-annual “America’s Best Companies” list, recognizing 500 companies, including 44 healthcare companies — several of which are Advisory Board members.

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Methodology

For the list, Forbes looked at public and private companies as well as foreign-based companies with a U.S. subsidiary and analyzed more than 100 metrics across 11 categories. Companies with U.S.  headquarters that employ more than 7,000 people in the United States were eligible for the list.

The primary categories Forbes looked at, and the data partner it worked with, were:

• Employee sentiment (Glassdoor), where workers rated their company in categories like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, and confidence in senior leadership.
• Customer sentiment (HundredX), where consumers rated products they purchased in categories like customer service, value, and dozens more.
• Financial performance (Forbes), which looked at one- and five-year metrics for stock prices and revenue growth.
• Business trajectory (Crunchbase), which assessed metrics that consider dozens of financial indicators like funding, market share and movements, and company growth.
• Cybersecurity (SecurityScorecard), which assessed categories like network and applications security, malware vulnerability, and regularity of patches.
• Media sentiment (SignalAI), which reviewed positive and negative company coverage of executive leadership, innovation, diversity performance, and financial performance.
• Workforce diversity (Denominator), which assessed representation at both executive and lower levels of the company of different groups, including gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, disability, and nationality.
• Sustainability (Morningstar), which assessed the robustness of climate governance, sustainability strategy, risk management, and financial and competitive strength.
• Workforce stability (People Data Labs), which looked at each company’s workforce growth rate, churn rate, and average C-suite tenure.
• Company size (Data Axle), which looked at each company’s number of U.S. employees.

Each company received an individual category score that was normalized and adjusted where appropriate to reflect how that score compared to competitors in their sector. Those scores were then combined to create a final score to develop the rankings.

The best healthcare companies in the US

In the drugs & biotechnology industry, the companies recognized on the list were:

87. AbbVie* (Chicago, IL)

119. Johnson & Johnson* (New Brunswick, NJ)

164. Amgen (Thousand Oaks, CA)

235. Gilead Sciences (Foster City, CA)

280. Merck & Co. (Kenilworth, NJ)

394. Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, MA)

460. Zoetis (Parsippany, NJ)

477. Biogen* (Cambridge, MA)

*Denotes an Advisory Board member

In the healthcare equipment & services industry, the companies recognized on the list were:

146. GE HealthCare Technologies (Chicago, IL)

331. Ansell Healthcare (Iselin, NJ)

357. Alcon Vision (Fort Worth, TX)

384. Henry Schein* (Melville, NY)

395. Herbalife International of America (Los Angeles, CA)

409. Home Life Care (Ahoskie, NC)

415. Zimmer Biomet* (Warsaw, IN)

422. Smith & Nephew (Memphis, TN)

442. Chemed (Cincinnati, OH)

443. Encompass Health* (Birmingham, AL)

497. Merrill Gardens (Seattle, WA)

*Denotes an Advisory Board member

In the healthcare & social services industry, the companies recognized on the list were:

45. CVS Health (Woonsocket, RI)

275. Northside Hospital* (Atlanta, GA)

309. Main Line Health* (Radnor Township, PA)

374. Oklahoma Heart Hospital (Oklahoma City, OK)

452. Sharp HealthCare* (San Diego, CA)

464. Carle* (Urbana, IL)

468. Henry Ford Health System* (Detroit, MI)

469. Sutter Health* (Sacramento, CA)

475. Virtua* (Marlton, NJ)

484. Cincinnati Children’s (Cincinnati, OH)

492. Harris Health System* (Houston, TX)

*Denotes an Advisory Board member

In the medical equipment & services industry, the companies recognized on the list were:

44. Abbott Laboratories (Chicago, IL)

103. Boston Scientific* (Marlborough, MA)

121. Dexcom* (San Diego, CA)

152. McKesson* (Irving, TX)

200. Intuitive Surgical (Sunnyvale, CA)

219. Stryker* (Kalamazoo, MI)

250. Labcorp Holdings* (Burlington, NC)

286. Cardinal Health (Dublin, OH)

342. Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, CA)

347. Becton Dickinson* (East Rutherford, NJ)

425. National Vision (Duluth, GA)

436. Quest Diagnostics* (Secaucus, NJ)

*Denotes an Advisory Board member

In the pharmacies industry, the companies recognized on the list were:

83. Walgreens Boots Alliance* (Deerfield, IL)

414. Kroger (Cincinnati, OH)