Here’s This Year’s Crop of Best Children’s Hospitals

This year’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings from U.S. News & World Report included some familiar names at the top of the list.

Among these were a trio of top hospitals also on last year’s highest performing list: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Texas Children’s Hospital, which previously took the No. 1, 2, and 3 spots, respectively.

However, amid a similar transition of other “Best Hospitals” lists, the 2024-2025 Honor Roll for children’s hospitals was no longer ordinally ranked, rather only alphabetically listed.

The Honor Roll consists of facilities deemed to “deliver exceptionally high-quality care across multiple specialties,” U.S. News noted. Each of the facilities on this year’s list of Honor Roll hospitals was either ranked No. 1 or tied for No. 1 in its state and region.

In completing this year’s rankings, data were analyzed from 108 children’s hospitals, and thousands of pediatric specialists were surveyed.

In nine specialties, one-third (33.3%) of each hospital’s score was tied to outcomes like survival, infections, and surgical complications. In cardiology and heart surgery, outcomes were 38.3% of a hospital’s score, and in a newly added behavioral health specialty, outcomes were 20%.

“When confronted with the daunting task of selecting a hospital for their child’s specialized medical needs, parents and caregivers can use U.S. News‘ evaluation of pediatric hospital performance as a valuable resource,” Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at U.S. News, said in a statement.

“This year’s inclusion of behavioral health as a new specialty is significant, as one in five U.S. children has a mental, emotional, behavioral, or developmental disorder, according to the Department of Health and Human Services,” Harder added. “U.S. News is responding to the growing mental health crisis among America’s youth by giving families a valuable source of behavioral health data as part of our increasingly comprehensive view of pediatric care.”

Aside from outcomes, more than 50% of each hospital’s score was based on metrics of its commitment to patient safety (i.e., adherence to practices that prevent infections), clinical resources (i.e., number of fellowship programs), family centeredness (i.e., degree to which families are involved in children’s care), and other objective measures.

Additionally, through an annual survey of pediatric specialists and subspecialists, which was averaged over a 3-year period in each of 11 specialties, expert opinion accounted for 10% of each hospital’s score in 10 specialties, and 5% in cardiology and heart surgery. Overall, more than 36,000 physicians were surveyed.

This year’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings come as U.S. News has continued to roll out changes to some of its existing health-related lists after a number of top medical schools and hospitals withdrew from participation in their respective rankings.

The 2024-2025 “Best Children’s Hospitals” Honor Roll is listed below. The full rankings, including the inaugural behavioral health specialty ranking, are available here.

• 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

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