Quick Facts:
Watonga
WATONGA, Okla. — There’s only one Oklahoma critical access hospital to make Chartis’ list of America’s best: Mercy Hospital Watonga.
Mercy earned its spot on the Chartis Critical Access Hospitals Top 100 for 2025 through performance metrics analyzing quality, patient perspectives and more.
“The type of service we provide at a critical access hospital is right there in the name — critical,” said Bobby Stitt, Mercy Hospital Watonga administrator. “Having basic emergency and hospital services in town is essential to a smaller community like Watonga. But it’s the caregivers at our hospital who make Watonga rank among the nation’s best. They’re dedicated to providing the best possible care and do so with compassion every day.”
Critical access hospitals
Critical access hospitals provide 24-hour emergency care and inpatient beds in communities at least a 35-mile drive away from another hospital. Certification by Medicare allows the hospital to receive cost-based reimbursement, making medical services in smaller communities financially sustainable.
Rural hospitals also have huge economic effects in their communities. A joint Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma Office of Rural Health study found that the state’s critical access hospitals have an average annual economic impact of more than $4.5 million for their towns.
Top 100 ranking
Chartis uses its Rural Hospital Performance INDEX to rate critical access.
The system uses publicly available data-sets to analyze eight pillars of performance, and the top-ranking hospitals make the Top 100 list.
Forty of the 154 hospitals in Oklahoma are critical access hospitals, but only Mercy Hospital Watonga made the Top 100 list. Mercy Hospital Paris in Arkansas also made the list.
