For the third straight year, Children's Hospital Los Angeles is ranked among the top five children's hospitals in the country, a distinction that recognizes the hospital's clinical expertise and the quality and breadth of its patient care.
CHLA also was named to the elite Honor Roll of the nation's "best" children's hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report rankings released online today. It is one of only 10 children's hospitals in the country and the only hospital on the West Coast to make the magazine's Honor Roll in 2014-15. CHLA has earned a spot on the esteemed list of best children's hospitals every year since it was established in 2009 - an achievement no other pediatric medical center in California can claim.
"We have an abundance of reasons to celebrate," says Richard D. Cordova, FACHE, president and CEO, Children's Hospital Los Angeles." For three years in a row, U.S. News & World Report has recognized CHLA as a world-class institution in health care for children, and this success is a reflection of the outstanding skills of our entire clinical staff, who have helped retain our institution's top-five ranking since 2012 and our title of 'best' among California pediatric medical centers."
This year, CHLA's Orthopaedics department was second in the nation, while Cancer and Neonatology were ranked fifth and sixth, respectively. In addition, Cardiology and Heart Surgery and Diabetes and Endocrinology were both ranked seventh nationally, while Gastroenterology and GI Surgery earned ninth position, rounding out the hospital's specialties ranked in the U.S. News top 10 in their respective categories.
Children's Hospital Los Angeles' overall scores placed it among the top five children's hospitals nationwide, and CHLA equaled or improved its national ranking in five of the 10 categories compared to the 2013-2014 survey. Both Orthopaedics and Neonatology climbed two spots, while Pulmonology (No. 13) and Nephrology (No. 17) each rose one position. Cardiology and Heart Surgery (No. 7) equaled last year's ranking, Neurology and Neurosurgery placed No. 16, and Urology ranked No. 20.
CHLA can also take pride in being included in an elite group of children's hospitals to have been nationally ranked in each of the 25 years that U.S. News & World Report has been conducting its authoritative review of the country's top children's hospitals. "I want to extend my profoundest congratulations to our doctors, nurses and staff on a job not just well done, but done with extraordinary skill, selflessness and consistency," Cordova says. "For CHLA to have earned a spot for 25 consecutive years is a tremendous accomplishment, and emblematic of how we fulfill our mission as a medical institution dedicated to patient care."
Children's hospitals that achieve exceptional scores in at least three pediatric specialties are named to U.S. News & World Report's Honor Roll of Best Children's Hospitals. Children's Hospital Los Angeles was joined by nine other hospitals on this prestigious list for 2014-15: Boston Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, Children's Hospital Colorado, Aurora, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Baltimore.
The purpose of the Best Children's Hospitals rankings list is to identify the hospitals that provide the highest quality of care for children with the most serious or complicated medical conditions. U.S. News pulls together clinical and operational data in 10 different pediatric medical specialties from a lengthy survey, completed by the majority of the 183 pediatric centers asked to participate in the rankings. U.S. News requires hard data such as availability of key resources and ability to prevent complications and infections, as well as survival rates, nurse staffing, subspecialist availability, procedure volume and many more pieces of critical information. The data from the survey is combined with recommendations from pediatric specialists on the hospitals they consider best for children with challenging medical conditions.
"U.S. News again recognizes that CHLA provides the best care to children throughout Southern California and beyond," says James Stein, MD, CHLA's associate chief of Surgery and chief medical quality officer. "Working closely with our families, the doctors, nurses and all our health care specialists provide the highest quality care. This work requires continuous evaluation and optimization of how we provide this care which we do with the support of our Board of Trustees and our Safety and Quality Services Committee."
Children's Hospital Los Angeles has been providing the highest-quality pediatric care to Southern California children for 113 years. Since the 2011 opening of the hospital's state-of-the-art inpatient tower, the Marion and John E. Anderson Pavilion, the hospital achieved for a second time Magnet® redesignation for nursing excellence, an honor that only 7 percent of all U.S. hospitals can claim. Over that same period, CHLA earned Top Hospital designation annually for safety and quality by The Leapfrog Group.
This past year, CHLA unveiled the Joyce and Stanley Black Family Building, newly named in honor of the family's $15 million gift to the hospital, and received an $8.5 million gift from the Margie and Robert E. Petersen Foundation to name CHLA's new rehabilitation center. In addition, the hospital expanded its clinical operations with outpatient centers in Santa Monica and the South Bay. Clinically, the hospital captured national headlines last month when CHLA surgeons performed the first auditory brainstem implant surgery in the U.S. approved by the Food and Drug Administration and funded by the National Institutes of Health. The patient, a deaf 3-year-old boy, was part of a clinical trial intending to determine the safety of the pioneering hearing device. Last October, CHLA cardiologists made Southern California history when they performed a rare in utero cardiac interventional procedure—a fetal aortic valvuloplasty—for the first time in this region. The hospital also received a $9.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to fund sickle cell disease research.
The latest annual rankings recognize the top 50 children's hospitals in 10 pediatric specialties. Eighty-nine hospitals are ranked in at least one specialty. U.S. News Media Group, the parent of U.S. News & World Report, announced the 2014-15 hospital rankings at 12:01 a.m. EST on Tuesday, June 10, on its website, www.usnews.com/childrenshospitals.
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