Earlier this year the University of Iowa Children's Hospital, located in UI Hospitals and Clinics, was ranked 20 th in Child magazine's Best Hospital rankings. Michael Artman, MD, professor and physician-in-chief of University of Iowa Children's Hospital, tells us more about this ranking and what such rankings mean for the University of Iowa Children's Hospital:
How are hospitals ranked in magazines such as Child ?
Child magazine does a very comprehensive, formal survey of children's hospitals.We completed a questionnaire that had about 250 questions, ranging from a variety of different aspects of our care, to our research programs, to the numbers of complex procedures we have, to the training and education of doctors and nurses, to child-friendliness, support for families, community involvement, and on and on. It's a very extensive survey with solid data that are then analyzed and scored by the experts at Child magazine.
Did any other children's hospital is the state of Iowa make the list of rankings in Child ?
There were no other children's hospitals in Iowa that made the list and there were none in the top 20. The Child magazine list is a total of 40 children's hospitals across the county. But you have travel far away to get to another children's hospital that was in the top 25 or top 30 rankings.
What makes a children's hospital eligible to submit an entry?
There's a national organization of children's hospitals called NACHRI, which stands for the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, and virtually every children's hospital in the country is a member of NACHRI. To qualify for this survey, you have to be a full member of NACHRI. Child magazine then contacted each hospital and asked if they wanted to participate.
Were there specific specialties in University of Iowa Children's Hospital that were also ranked separately? What specialties were they?
Yes, Child magazine selected six sub-specialties for further, more detailed analysis. They looked very carefully at:
- Neonatal intensive care units
- Orthopaedic surgery programs
- Pediatric cancer care
- Emergency medicine
- Pulmonary medicine
- Cardiology
There were separate questionnaires for each of those sub-specialties. And we did very well in various sub-specialties. We ranked in the top 15 for our neonatal care, our emergency medicine, and our pediatric pulmonary care. And we were in the 25-30 for orthopaedics, cancer care, and cardiology. So we were really quite strong in some of the main sub-specialties that Child magazine looked at.
What do rankings like these in popular children's magazines do for University of Iowa Children's Hospital?
This is quite a prestigious list of children's hospitals. This puts us up in really top-notch stratus for children's hospitals across the country. We were really humbled to be selected for this ranking and to achieve number 20 th nationally. I think it validates and shows people that we are of the highest quality, we have comprehensive care for children, we have tremendous outcomes, and we're pushing the envelope with cutting edge research and educational programs. This just validates our conviction that we're among the best of the best.
The important thing here is that children and families in the state of Iowa don't need to travel far away to get excellent, top-notch, world-class care. They can get it right here at University of Iowa Children's Hospital, here in Iowa City. |
