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Methodology
Statista and Newsweek have partnered to provide patients and family members with a comprehensive resource to informed decision making in finding the Best Children's Hospitals in the United States for their specific treatment needs.
The America's Best Children's Hospitals 2024 ranking awards the leading Children's hospitals in 8 pediatric fields: Cardiology & Cardiac Surgery, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology & Gastrointestinal Surgery, Neonatology, Neurology & Neurosurgery, Oncology & Hematology, Orthopedics, and Pulmonology & Thoracic Surgery.
The list lengths vary across fields: the top 50 hospitals are recognized for Cardiology & Cardiac Surgery, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology & Gastrointestinal Surgery, Neonatology, Oncology & Hematology, Pulmonology & Thoracic Surgery, and Neurology & Neurosurgery and the top 30 for Orthopedics.
The lists are based on four data sources:
1. Nationwide online survey
From April to May 2024 thousands of health care professionals and hospital managers with knowledge about pediatric care e.g., general and specialized pediatricians and nurses were asked to recommend leading children's hospitals in the US. Participants were asked to recommend hospitals in their primary sub-specialty as well as a secondary sub-specialty. Primary recommendations had a 70% weight of the reputation score, secondary recommendations had a weight of 30% of the reputation score.
The reputation score has a weight of 51.5% of the overall score.
2. Results from patient surveys
Publicly available data from hospital surveys of patient experience during their hospitalizations. Survey topics included: cleanliness of the hospital, communication of the nurses/doctors, care transition, communication about medicines, discharge information, quietness, and staff responsiveness.
Those data were used to determine the patient experience score, which has a 15% weight of the overall score.
3. Hospital quality metrics
These are publicly available data from a variety of sources on indicators relevant to pediatric care. Data on infection prevention, vaccination rates (of staff), and patient satisfaction was available from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CMS data accounts for 30% of the hospital quality metrics score.
From The Joint Commission, an independent, nonprofit hospital accreditation organization, data were available for hospital accreditations, national patient safety goals, and the advanced certifications. Accreditation data was also available from the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT). The accreditations/certifications account for 5% of the hospital quality metrics score.
Additionally, the AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals Database has been included in the scoring model. The database contains data provided by more than 6,200 hospitals and 400 health care systems and features over 1,300 hospital data points. For America's Best Children's Hospitals, structural and organizational data of hospital facilities was used to be included in the hospital quality metrics score. The AHA data accounts for 65% of the hospital quality metrics score. All indicators factored into the scoring models are denoted in the appendix of the respective methodology documents presented in the online publication.
These data were used to determine the quality metrics score, which has a weight of 30% of the overall score.
4. PROMs
A PROMs implementation score has been included in the scoring model of the America's Best Specialized Hospitals project. In the fall and winter of 2023, Newsweek and Statista reached out to hospitals and conducted a voluntary survey about the implementation and use of PROMs.
This year, Statista has partnered with the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM, www.ichom.org) as a knowledge partner. ICHOM is the world's leading non-profit organization dedicated to development of standardized measurement of patient-important outcomes (including PROMs) as a basis for driving value-based health care. ICHOM is contributing to the future development of the PROMs implementation survey, in a manner that can drive not only measurement but use of the data from PROMs (and other patient-important outcomes) to advance value based healthcare.
A grading system for the different questions was built to determine a PROMs implementation score for each participating hospital. Only hospitals which achieved a minimum of 50% (of the maximum 100% score) were eligible to be graded and received a maximum of up to 3.5% towards the overall score.
Disclaimer: The rankings are comprised exclusively of hospitals that are eligible regarding the scope described in this document. The ranking is the result of an elaborate process which, due to the interval of data-collection and analysis, is a reflection of the last 12 months. Furthermore, events preceding or following the period June 19, 2023 – June 19, 2024, and/or pertaining to individual persons affiliated/associated to the facilities were not included in the metrics. As such, the results of this ranking should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations.
The information provided in this ranking should be considered in conjunction with other available information about hospitals or, if possible, accompanied by a visit to a facility. The quality of hospitals that are not included in the rankings is not disputed.
About Statista R
Statista R is a world leader in the creation of company, brand, and product rankings and top lists, based on comprehensive market research and data analysis: Statista R recognizes the best. With a team of over 100 expert analysts and in cooperation with more than 40 high profile media brands across all continents, Statista R creates transparency for consumers and business decision makers and helps companies build trust and recognition across a plethora of industries and product categories. Visit r.statista.com for further information about Statista R and our rankings.Statista R is a division of Statista. The leading data and business intelligence portal provides an extensive collection of statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries. Find out more at statista.com.
About ICHOM
The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM, www.ichom.org) is the leading non-profit dedicated to transforming healthcare by focusing on what truly matters to patients. They accomplish this by empowering patient and clinical leaders to standardize important clinical, quality of life, function and experience results for health care, and enabling transparent large-scale use to achieve patient-centric health system transformation. ICHOM's standardized 'sets' of patient-centered outcomes measures help all actors in healthcare design, deliver and evaluate care based on outcomes that matter to patients. To date, ICHOM has developed 45 outcome measure sets for conditions. The sets are available in IT-ready interoperable formats and have been implemented in 500+ care settings in 42+ countries.
Download the full methodology here.
