Nine New York-area hospitals that focus on caring for children battling major health issues are feeling pretty darn good these days.
Those hospitals and one in upstate Rochester have just been ranked among the top 50 in the nation in at least one medical specialty, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual tally.
Leading the way was New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley-Komansky Children’s Hospital, which landed in the top rankings in all 10 specialties, the findings released Tuesday show.
It was among the best in the country in diabetes and endocrinology; gastroenterology and GI surgery, and cardiology and heart surgery, the report found.
Affiliated with Columbia and Cornell universities, the hospital has consistently landed in the top rankings since the survey was launched 11 years ago.
Also in the New York area, the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, L.I., made the chart in nine categories. The state-of-the-art hospital ranked ninth in the country in urology, 19th in neonatology, and 20th in cancer treatment, based on the survey.
The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore was ranked in seven areas, including 23rd in orthopedics, 24th in nephrology, 30th in gastroenterology and GI surgery, and 37th in cancer treatment.
Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital was lauded with rankings in six medical specialty fields, including diabetes and endocrinology, 16th; gastroenterology and GI surgery, 23rd, and neurology and neurosurgery, 27th.
The Best Hospital rankings are largely based on a lengthy survey with 1,800 questions and data points. The survey is mailed out to 200 children’s hospitals nationwide. The questions cover everything from patient volume, risk-adjusted survival rates and adequacy of nurse staffing.
“We try to make the best use of that information to provide patients and their families about where to get the best care for their kids,” said Ben Harder, who spearheads the project for U.S. News & World Report.
Each year, U.S. News takes a new look at the approaches it takes to rank hospitals. As a result, this is the first year the survey results were based on a new metric that measures the outcome of heart surgeries at different hospitals. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons developed the new measure.
“Surgeons and other doctors have told us that’s a very important measure,” Harder said.
U.S. News also publicly identified the 126 medical advisers who help shape the survey questions before they are sent to hospital officials.
“We feel transparency is really important,” Harder said, noting publicizing the names will safeguard any possible questions of preferential treatment to hospitals tied to those doctors.
The advisers work on the survey voluntarily and are not paid.
Two New York City hospitals grabbed top spots specifically for their cancer-treatment units. They are the Claire Tow Pediatric Pavilion at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (15) and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (37).
The other city and area hospitals taking top spots are Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center, N.J.; Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, N.J.; Winthrop-University Hospital Children’s Medical Center on Long Island; the Hospital for Special Surgery, Lenox Hill, and University of Rochester-Golisano Children’s Hospital.
None of the New York-area hospitals landed on U.S. News’ elite 10-member honor roll list. Those hospitals are Boston’s Children’s Hospital; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston; Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore; Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles; Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio; Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington.
