America's Best Children's Hospitals
Expanded and improved, these new rankings give parents better tools
For the past 18 years, we have ranked pediatric hospitals. But now we are taking a giant step forward.
The rankings no longer rely exclusively on reputation, as they have since 1990. We've now built in a way to measure life vs. death—a hospital's ability to treat kids successfully and send them home. What could be more important? We chose three challenging procedures that are reasonable tests of a good center's skills—a complicated heart repair, brain surgery, and a bone marrow transplant. Then, through an online survey, we asked 122 children's hospitals how many of each they do and how well they do them.
We also requested information on a set of a half-dozen hospital attributes that affect the quality of care: overall patient volume, nurse staffing, and available cutting-edge technology, for example.
There's only so much data that can be put on a magazine page without making eyes glaze over. Expanded details about the three procedures can be found at health.usnews.com/pediatrics. Speaking of expanded, this is only the first of other improvements in the works for this crucial specialty. Upcoming changes will further enhance the usefulness of the rankings.
Following the rankings is a guide to finding the right children's center when one is needed. You'll be moved by photos capturing the experience of Makenna Franks and her parents at Texas Children's Hospital, where the 4-year-old had her third open-heart surgery. One of our reporters looks back on the weeks following the recent birth of her premature twin girls. And we close with Bernadine Healy's thoughts about the neonatal icus that have saved the lives of so many babies.
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