U.S. News marks 20 years of ranking children’s hospitals

U.S. News & World Report has released its rankings of America’s top children’s hospitals for 2026-27, and this year marks a milestone.

U.S. News has been ranking hospitals for more than 30 years, but this is the 20th year that U.S. News has produced a rundown focused on the best pediatric hospitals. Hospitals and health systems routinely tout their recognition from U.S. News in advertising campaigns.

Jennifer Winston, a health data scientist at U.S. News & World Report, tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that the analysis of children’s hospitals has become more sophisticated over the years.

“We're really excited to be presenting the 20th annual Best Children's Hospitals,” Winston says. “I feel like they get a little stronger every year. We continue to refine and improve our methodology each year, and so we're really happy to have two decades of experience rating children's hospitals, and we're excited to have them available to hospitals and families.”

More specialty rankings

Winston says the rankings have expanded significantly, with U.S. News identifying top hospitals in cancer, cardiology, orthopedics and more.

“We expanded from a ‘Best Children's Hospitals’ that was based almost entirely on expert opinion to now an evaluation of 11 different pediatric specialties that is based on thousands of data points that are submitted by hospitals each year, and we use all of that information to evaluate hospitals and their performance,” she says.

Part of the analysis of children’s hospitals involves examining the processes organizations have in place. Winston says that includes best practices, such as education and training providers and tracking efforts to prevent infections.

The analysis also includes looking closely at the hospital’s staffing levels. Winston says that goes beyond physicians and specialists, but includes nurses, social workers and psychologists.

U.S. News also looks at how the hospitals involve families as “part of the care team for their child,” Winston says.

And the analysis looks at how often children’s hospitals are treating patients with certain conditions.

“We know that the more practice a provider has in treating a particular patient or doing a particular kind of procedure, it makes a difference,” Winston says.

U.S. News also closely examines outcomes in certain specialties, which Winston says is critical to families and referring physicians.

“If it's cardiology, we might look at how well a child does after a heart transplant, with their survival rates and whether they're readmitted to the hospital,” Winston says. “For a more chronic condition like diabetes, we look at the hospital's success in managing that condition. So it is very tailored to the individual specialty, but we look at a breadth of metrics to try and evaluate how well a hospital is treating kids.”

Families crave information

With its ranking of the best adult hospitals, U.S. News relies largely on data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. But that data isn’t available for examining children’s hospitals, so U.S. News asks hospitals to self-report the data that is analyzed.

Winston says it’s not a small undertaking for hospitals to supply the data.

“It's a very long survey,” Winston says. “We do ask for 1,000-plus data points, and so we really value the amount of time that hospitals spend filling out the survey for these purposes. We've really tried to streamline the survey in recent years, but we recognize it's still an undertaking, and so we really appreciate the amount of work that goes into it, and it is one of the things that makes our Best Children's Hospitals rankings special is that we do have that really granular data from hospitals themselves.”

Winston says U.S. News aims to provide the best analysis possible in its evaluation of adult hospitals and pediatric hospitals.

But she says there’s a desire to make sure that the rankings are useful for parents looking for the best possible care for their children. And that means parents are willing to travel to the best hospital, especially since some communities aren’t close to a pediatric facility.

“Parents really will do a lot for their kids, and go further for their kids to advocate for them and make sure that they're getting the right care for them, even more so than they might feel comfortable doing for themselves. And so, yeah, there is a certain responsibility to be putting out information that is helpful for families,” Winston says.

“Families use a lot of information,” she adds. “I know they do a lot of research, they talk to their doctors, as they should, when making their decisions. But we do want to be a valued resource for information for families when they're making those decisions. And so, we do take that responsibility really seriously.”