U.S. News Names NTMC High Performing; Zoo Tales Debuts at Frank Buck Zoo

North Texas Medical Center says U.S. News & World Report has named it a High Performing Hospital for 2026, a rating the hospital says came from surveys patients fill out after they go home, and Frank Buck Zoo has added Zoo Tales, an Aug. 8 morning of children's books read aloud by local authors at Leonard Park. Both institutions are publicly owned: the Gainesville Hospital District owns NTMC, and the city says the park and zoo serve most of Cooke County.

The survey behind the rating is HCAHPS, which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services calls the first national, standardized, publicly reported measure of how patients describe hospital care. The CMS file lists NTMC at four stars out of five for the year ending Sept. 30, 2025, on roughly 300 completed surveys.

Question by question, the record is mixed. Medicare's Care Compare shows NTMC above the national rate on whether patients would definitely recommend the hospital and on whether rooms and bathrooms were always clean. On the broadest question, the share of patients rating a stay 9 or 10, NTMC came in a point below the national average and several points below the Texas average, CMS files show.

In those same records, four stars put NTMC ahead of Texoma Medical Center, Wilson N. Jones Regional Medical Center and Medical City Denton, and even with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Denton. CMS says patient experience has counted in Hospital Value-Based Purchasing since October 2012 discharges, so the scores carry money as well as publicity. NTMC announced the same U.S. News designation in 2025, making 2026 a second straight year.

The hospital's 2026 Community Health Needs Assessment, adopted by its board March 17, says Cooke County patients accounted for about three-quarters of last fiscal year's inpatient discharges. It ranks recruiting and keeping providers as the county's first health need, in a county older than the state as a whole and projected to keep growing through 2030.

A Women's Choice Award listing for NTMC shows a 73 percent inpatient recommendation figure and rankings in emergency care and small-hospital comprehensive care, rather than a standalone patient-satisfaction award; the group says hospitals pay no fee to qualify.

The city calendar listed Zoo Tales as live readings with books for sale and signing, plus zoo-admission bookmarks for children while supplies lasted. Zoo posts tied the morning to books with regional roots, among them The Pet Promise and The Fancy Flamingo by local author Maygon Lucart, sold in the zoo's trading post. The zoo thanked Maygon Waldrip Lucart afterward for reading it.

Reading is familiar ground there. Cooke County Library's Zooper Reads hands out free children's books at the zoo for children to read to the animals, and the zoo's monthly Discovery Days is on hold while staff prepare a new wildlife preserve. Council approved that expansion onto city land south of the zoo in January, 5-0 with two members absent. A Jan. 6 council communication said the Powers Family committed $100,000 toward fencing and animals, and a March city staff report said crews were installing perimeter and pasture fencing. The zoo's official page lists general admission at $9 for ages 13-54; Fort Worth Zoo lists $22 for adults.