The Story Behind the Ranking: What It Means to Be Named One of America’s Top 10 Children’s Hospitals by US News and World Report

We work every day to provide the best possible care at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and our most important seal of approval is the trust of the families we serve.

Still, it’s nice that our care gets noticed by an outside source – a validation that others recognize our commitment to delivering the best outcomes for children. And once again, we received one of the top public accolades in our field: U.S. News and World Report has named us as one of America’s 10 Best Children’s Hospitals as part of its “Honor Roll.”

What does that mean? It means a promise to provide best-in-practice care for your child and a commitment to research that benefits children everywhere.

How do we earn this ranking? U.S. News surveyed 187 pediatric centers like ours across the country. The survey is extensive with hundreds of questions. They want to know about our clinical outcomes and overall quality of care as well the depth of specialized services and resources available for families in ten different specialties, from cancer to urology.

The survey asks general questions, such as how many nurses a hospital has, and more specific ones, such as the survival rate for certain kinds of cancer. The survey also asks medical specialists around the country where they would send the sickest children to be treated.

A select number of centers that rank particularly high in many specialties make the Honor Roll. This year, only 10 pediatric centers in the entire country received that Honor Roll distinction. Nationwide Children’s is once again one of them. Nationwide Children’s is one of the few hospitals across the country to have high performance in all pediatric specialties evaluated by U.S. News for their Best Children’s Hospitals survey.

We encourage parents who are making critical health care choices for their child to look beyond just rankings, to speak with the care providers who know their child best and to consider multiple options. Our specialists are here to support you with clinical decision support and the Welcome Center team caters to the individual needs of patients traveling long-distance or internationally to access care.

We’re proud of the rankings, and they are deserved recognition for our physicians and employees. But we remain driven to do more, to be better, and to earn the trust of the people we care for.