Eighty-three IT teams are in the running to be named a top hospital in the Healthcare IT News 2013 "Where to Work: BEST Hospital IT Departments" program.

Overall, 5,567 IT staff from 170 nominated hospitals completed the 79-question online survey. To qualify to be considered a top hospital, at least half the employees in an IT department needed to complete the survey.

Healthcare IT News launched the "Where to Work: BEST Hospital IT Departments" program in 2011. Its goal is to determine what characteristics distinguish the best hospital IT departments from all the rest. To do that, employees grade their departments across seven categories: day-to-day work, IT team, management, hospital leadership, workplace culture, training and development and compensation.

The employee survey closed June 7. Independent research company Critical Insights, which conducts the survey, is nearly done analyzing the data, and the top 25 winners will be announced in the October issue of Healthcare IT News, in print and online.

The program's categories include:

Top 5 small hospital IT departments (up to 25 IT employees)

Top 10 medium (26 to 75 employees)

Top 5 large (76 to 199 employees)

Top 5 super (200-plus employees)

Here are the 83 hospital IT departments in the running to be named a 2013 top hospital:

(Continue to next page to view list.)