Boston Children's Hospital was recognized as the top pediatric hospital in the U.S. for the sixth year in a row, according to the 13th annual Best Children's Hospitals rankings from U.S. News and World Report.
According to the 2019-20 rankings released Tuesday, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) came in as the second top pediatric hospital while Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Texas Children’s Hospital tied for third.
The Best Children's Hospitals rankings are meant to help families with complex and rare conditions find the best medical care for their children, U.S. News officials said in a release. The top 10 hospitals on the rankings' "honor roll" were so rated because of exceptionally high-quality care across multiple specialties.
The rankings are based on outcomes data such as infections and surgical complications as well as metrics of each hospital's commitment to patient safety, clinical resources and family centeredness. A hospital's reputation based on an annual survey of more than 15,000 pediatric specialists and subspecialists in each of the 10 specialties was also taken into account.
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U.S. News officials said they also made changes in their methodology this year related to expert feedback such as changing pediatric cardiology and heart surgery scoring by using a revised Society of Thoracic Surgeons-calculated adjusted mortality rate. U.S. News dropped certain data elements in other specialties that, while clinically important, were particularly challenging for hospitals to collect in a standardized manner. For instance, in pediatric urology, a measure of complications following surgical intervention for a urological procedure was removed from the survey because hospitals faced challenges in tracking and consistently reporting these outcomes
Here's a look at the 2019–20 U.S. News & World Report Best Children's Hospitals rankings:
1. Boston Children’s Hospital
2. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center/Texas Children’s Hospital
5. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
6. Children’s National Medical Center
7. Nationwide Children’s Hospital
8. UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
9. Johns Hopkins Children’s Center
10. Seattle Children’s Hospital
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The report also highlighted the top 50 centers in 10 pediatric specialties including cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastrointestinal (GI) surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, urology, and pulmonology and lung surgery.
Boston Children's was a top hospital in five of the 10 specialties examined: cancer, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics and urology.
CHOP ranked first in diabetes and endocrinology and gastroenterology and GI surgery, Texas Children’s Hospital was tops when it came to cardiology and heart surgery and pulmonology and lung surgery and the Children's National Medical Center was No. 1 in neonatology.