Report ranks best children's hospitals

U.S. News & World Report reports on the nation's best children's hospitals: "Out of all of the roughly 5,000 U.S. hospitals, only about 1 in 30 has deep expertise in caring for children with serious problems. For youngsters who need that quality of care, the Best Children's Hospitals rankings showcase the medical centers that see kids every day who have cancer, cystic fibrosis, defective hearts, and countless other life-threatening or rare conditions beyond the capabilities of most hospitals, even those with sizable pediatric departments. ... The rankings relied on two surveys—a reputational survey sent to pediatric specialists and a data survey sent to a handpicked set of hospitals" (Comarow, 6/2).

In a separate story, U.S. News & World Report explains the rankings and methodology: "Independent, accessible banks of pediatric data comparable to the enormous Medicare files used for key Best Hospitals data do not exist. The only answer is to obtain the information from the hospitals themselves, as we have done since the first edition of Best Children's Hospitals in 2007." The analysis is based on three major areas: reputation, outcomes and care-related indicators (Comarow, 6/2).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.