It was a repeat performance for all 10 children’s hospitals named as the nation’s best in this year’s iteration of U.S. News & World Report's ranking.
The highly watched list, now in its 19th year, reviewed outcomes, practices and surveyed opinions for 198 children’s hospitals.
Of these, 86 hospitals were named in some respect, whether that be a top-10 ranking for 10 different pediatric specialties and/or as one of 50 unranked facilities named as a high performer on pediatric and adolescent behavioral health.
Among these, 10 children’s hospitals were named to the list’s honor roll for scoring well across multiple specialties. That unranked collection is identical to last year’s honorees.
- Boston Children's Hospital
- Children's Hospital Colorado, Aurora
- Children's Hospital Los Angeles
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
- Children's National Hospital, Washington, D.C.
- Cincinnati Children's
- Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
- Rady Children's Hospital, San Diego
- Seattle Children's Hospital
- Texas Children's Hospital, Houston
Among those, three of the hospitals earned the top spot in three different ranked specialties. These were Boston Children’s Hospital for neonatology, nephrology and urology; Cincinnati Children’s for cancer, diabetes and endocrinology, and gastroenterology and GI surgery; and Texas Children’s Hospital for cardiology and heart surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, and pulmonology and lung surgery.
“The 10 children's hospitals that are on our Best Children's Hospitals Honor Roll are distinguished by both an incredible breadth of expertise and depth of expertise,” Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis at U.S. News, said. “Each one of them ranks among the best hospitals in the country, in all 11 specialties that we evaluate, and nearly all of them rank at the top or very close to the top in one or more of those specialties. So they have both this incredible expertise in specific specialties and also really can be counted on to provide excellent care across the whole gamut of specialties that we evaluate.”
The Best Children’s Hospitals list is an annual project headed by U.S. News and research firm RTI International. It surveyed operational, outcomes and safety data from 108 facilities (of 198 that were eligible) as well as opinion surveys with more than 36,000 expert physicians.
The publication said its methodology and weighting was similar to the year prior, which was the first to include the 50-hospital pediatric behavioral health specialty and to toss ordinal ranks for the honor roll. It also gives ordinal rankings at the state level and for seven U.S. regions.
The organization describes its effort and online rankings as a resource “to help inform families who are seeking particular type of care for their child to choose which hospital is best for them,” Harding said.
The annual release, much like its counterpart for general acute hospital care, has also become a point of pride for recipient hospitals, which often highlight their accolades in public-facing messaging materials. This has historically led to some criticisms that the list serves as paid marketing for well-resourced hospitals and that the conditions U.S. News chooses to weigh can have ramifications for health equity. The publication and its staff have previously addressed such concerns by highlighting their efforts to reduce surveying burdens on participating hospitals and continually review its chosen quality metrics.