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Pittsburgh Hospital Makes U.S. News Honor Roll

PITTSBURGH (NewsRadio 1020 KDKA) - U.S. News and World Report has come out with its 2014 best Children's Hospitals Rankings.

On the top 10, making the honor roll, you will find Boston Children's Hospital and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia tied for the top spot. Further down the list lies UPMC Children's Hospital.

Kimberly Leonard, Health Rankings Producer with U.S. News, joined Bill Rehkopf on the Afternoon News. Leonard explained all the work that goes into determining this list.

"The rankings are particularly geared towards families who have children who face life threatening or rare conditions, or those who have to go through complicated procedures," Leonard said. "So when we look at the data we really are looking for important factors like infection control, how long a child survives after transplant, how much volume is in the hospital. The more surgeries are conducted the better particular surgeons seem to get at them and then finally how many nurses are involved we have a methodology report that looks at all these different factors."

The rankings also break down the hospitals by specialties, the diabetes and endocrinology unit are ranked the highest specialty at UPMC Children's Hospital coming in at number five against other Hospital units. As one of the diabetes experts is leaving UPMC, we asked Leonard if she thinks UPMC should show concern with their ranking.

"We will have to wait and see it rarely just relies on a single person. There are so many factors that go into our rankings they are really data based, whether they choose someone else to replace him or how well the staff is trained to sort of take on a lot of the responsibilities that he had, I suppose we will just wait and see," Leonard said.

KDKA partners with UPMC Children's Hospital every year to benefit the Free Care Fund. Each year we hear stories from families whose lives have been touched by UPMC Children's Hospital and well renowned the care they receive is there. Leonard believes the better care we are seeing at hospitals is because patients today are becoming better educated and researching doctors.

"We are certainly entering particularly an era of care in which patients are becoming much more involved in their care and they are asking a lot more question and they are working more collaboratively with their physicians," Leonard said. "Our rankings are really meant to be a guide to get families started and to have them really think about where they should be receiving care."

You can hear the whole interview below:

Children's Hospital Rankings

You can also listen to the KDKA Afternoon News with Bill Rehkopf weekdays 3-7 p.m.

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