Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia tied for first place as the best pediatric medical center in the country, according to the annual study conducted by U.S. News & World Report.
The West Philadelphia shared the top spot with perennial rival Boston Children’s Hospital.
Last year, CHOP was alone at the top of the rankings. In 2012 it also was tied for first with Boston Children’s.
The publication ranks the medical centers based on their performance in 10 pediatric specialties: cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology & GI surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology, and urology.
The scores are based on a combination of patient outcome data and questionnaire responses from the hospitals and survey responses from of 150 pediatric specialists around the country. The doctors were asked where they would send the sickest children in their specialty, if location and expense were not a factor.
The publication tinkered with year’s methodology, making changes that included increasing the scoring weight assigned to infection prevention and to the use of “best practices,” and decreasing the weight of hospital reputation.“Each year, we strive to hone the methodology and improve the rankings’ usefulness to families,” said Avery Comarow, U.S. News health rankings editor. “With the input of working groups of pediatric medical experts, we’ve made changes to better measure care in each specialty.”
CHOP and Boston Children’s ranked in the top 10 in all 10 categories. Chop was first in pulmonology and neonatology. It also had three second place rankings [cancer, diabetes and endocrinology and neurology and neurosurgery], three thirds and two fourths.
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The publication noted CHOP, in the most recent year reported, had 31,262 admissions and 88,212 emergency room visits and performed 7,568 inpatient and 18,369 outpatient surgeries.
Dr. Steven M. Altschuler, CHOP’s CEO, called the top ranking “a testament to the dedication and skill of our talented staff, who work tirelessly every day to provide the best care to children and to advance the field of pediatric health care.”
Finishing behind CHOP and Boston Children's was, in order, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston andChildren’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Another area children's hospital, the Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmngton, has one top 10 ranking taking sixth place in orthopedics. It also ranked in the top 50 in the nine other specialty categories.
St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia ranked in the top 50 in three categories: orthopedics, nephrology and diabetes and endocrinology.
