The annual U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals rankings, now in their 16th year, offer guidance to parents seeking the best place for their very sick child. The top 50 medical centers are ranked in 10 specialties, including pediatric cancer, pediatric cardiology and heart surgery and pediatric orthopedics.
In the 2022-2023 rankings, 90 hospitals ranked among the best in at least one pediatric medical specialty. Ten of those hospitals earned a place on the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll by garnering points for being highly ranked in many specialties.
U.S. News: Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll
1. Boston Children’s Hospital.
2. Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston.
3. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
4. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
5. Children’s National Hospital, Washington, D.C.
6. UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
7. Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora.
8. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
9. Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.
10. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Palo Alto, California.
Regional Rankings
To help families identify high-quality pediatric centers close to home, U.S. News also ranked children’s hospitals in each state and in seven multi-state regions. The multi-state regions, and the No. 1 hospital in each region, are:
— Pacific: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
— Rocky Mountain: Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora.
— Southwest: Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston.
— Southeast: Children’s Hospital of Alabama at UAB, Birmingham; Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta; and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Nashville (tie).
— Midwest: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
— Mid-Atlantic: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
— New England: Boston Children’s Hospital.
How U.S. News Produced the Rankings
The 2022-2023 Best Children’s Hospitals rankings were created from data collected through a clinical survey sent to nearly 200 hospitals and a survey sent to thousands of pediatric doctors nationwide. RTI International, a North Carolina-based research and consulting firm that also generates the Best Hospitals rankings, administered both surveys and analyzed the results. More than 100 pediatric medical experts provided input on what information to collect and how to analyze the data.
Whether and how high a hospital was ranked depended on how well it performed in three broad arenas of quality:
— Clinical outcomes, such as maximizing survival following complex surgery, minimizing complications from kidney biopsies and preventing infections in the neonatal intensive care unit.
— Efficient coordination of care as demonstrated, for example, by complying with accepted hand-washing protocols and other best practices, and a demonstrated commitment to advancing equity, diversity and inclusion among patients and hospital staff.
— Providing care-related resources such as ample nursing staff and outpatient programs tailored to particular conditions.
Each of these three major areas determined about one-third of a hospital’s score in each specialty.
Results from the survey of pediatric specialists contributed up to 13% of a hospital’s score, depending on specialty. Doctors were asked to name up to 10 hospitals they consider best in their specialty for children with serious or difficult medical problems. More than 5,000 physicians responded this year. Their responses were combined with those from similar surveys conducted in 2021 and 2020.
How U.S. News analyzed the data and put it together is fully described in the Best Children’s Hospitals Methodology Report, available as a downloadable PDF.
The Top-Ranked Children’s Hospital in Each Specialty
See complete rankings in all 10 pediatric specialties.
— Cancer: Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Hospital.
— Cardiology & Heart Surgery: Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston.
— Diabetes & Endocrinology: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
— Gastroenterology & GI Surgery: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
— Neonatology: Children’s National Hospital, Washington, D.C.
— Nephrology: Boston Children’s Hospital.
— Neurology & Neurosurgery: Boston Children’s Hospital.
— Orthopedics: Boston Children’s Hospital.
— Pulmonology & Lung Surgery: Texas Children’s Hospital.
— Urology: Boston Children’s Hospital.
U.S. News also evaluates hospitals that treat adults, publishing rankings or ratings for 15 adult specialties and procedures and conditions such as hip replacement and heart failure.
Ben Harder oversees methodology and data analysis for U.S. News & World Report’s portfolio of data-driven patient decision-support tools, including the Best Hospitals and Best Children’s Hospitals rankings, Best Nursing Homes ratings, and searchable Find a Doctor directory. A frequent speaker on topics related to quality measurement and public reporting, Harder is a healthcare journalist whose work has appeared in BMJ, JAMA, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic News, Science News, USA Today, the Washington Post and other publications. A Science News cover story he wrote about the use of maggots in medicine was anthologized in Best American Science Writing 2005. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he served as the first Editor in Chief of Let’s Go Publications, a publisher of travel guides. He completed a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation journalism fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 and has been an editor at U.S. News since 2007. He tweets @benharder.
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Best Children’s Hospitals 2022-2023 Honor Roll and Overview originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 06/14/22: This story was previously published and has been updated with new information.
