Children’s Hospital Colorado has made the top 10 honor roll for being among the best children’s hospitals in the nation, according to 2024-2025 rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

The nonprofit hospital system has four campuses: the headquarters at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, the five-year-old Colorado Springs location adjacent to UCHealth Memorial Hospital North, a north-metro hospital in Westminster and a south-metro hospital in Highlands Ranch.

“What it indicates is Children’s Hospital Colorado has both a breadth and depth in expertise in treating sick children that is unrivaled,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis and managing editor at U.S. News, which publishes news, rankings, analysis and consumer advice.

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For the first time, the 10 honor rolls recipients are not ranked numerically this year. “There’s no No. 1,” Harder said. “Those hospitals are all exceptionally good at pretty much everything they do.”

Children’s Hospital Colorado does rank No. 1 in the state of Colorado and in the Rocky Mountain region, however, under the U.S. News & World Report system.

“At Children’s Hospital Colorado, we like to say that ‘here, it’s different,’ With a U.S. News & World Report top 10 ranking, we’re proving it,” President and CEO Jena Hausmann said in a statement.

The new approach to ranking “recognizes a leading group of children’s hospitals whose work pushes the child health field to be better, heal more and make new discoveries,” she said. 

U.S. News & World Report began publishing data on pediatric care in 2007. Rankings are created from data collected through surveying 108 children’s hospitals and thousands of pediatric doctors nationwide, with the help of RTI International, a North Carolina-based research and consulting firm. Measures such as patient outcomes, health equity, efficient care coordination, available clinical resources and compliance with best practices are examined to arrive at the rankings.

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“For many families who have a child with health care needs, whether it’s a digestive issue or congenital heart defect or cancer, those can be a long journey for the family, and it can be very challenging to identify the resources they need and who they can turn to for immediate assessment, guidance and treatment,” Harder said. “It’s important we’ve identified hospitals that have been consistently high performers among many specialties and over the years to help families identify institutions they can turn to.”

Children’s Hospital Colorado did not make the top 10 honor roll last year but came in seventh nationally in 2022-2023, sixth in 2021-2022 and ninth in 2020-2021.

The other nine in the nation’s top 10 honor roll for 2024-2025 are: Boston’s Children’s Hospital; Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Children’s National Hospital, Washington; Cincinnati Children’s; Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio; Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego; Seattle Children’s Hospital; and Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston.

This year, an 11th area of specialty, behavioral health care, has been added to areas analyzed.

Since one in five children in the United States has a mental, emotional, behavioral or developmental disorder, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Harder said it’s valuable for families to have behavioral health data for pediatric care.

Children’s Hospital Colorado ranks in the top 50 in the nation in behavioral health care.

“We realized it’s an underfunded area, so getting access to good care can be a real challenge, and we wanted to identify hospitals to meet this growing need,” Harder said.

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Other specialties examined for the study are: pediatric cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and GI surgery, neonatology, nephrology, pulmonary and lung surgery, and urology.

Six of the specialties at Children’s Hospital Colorado fall in the top 10 and four in the top 20 nationally. The highest-ranking score was for diabetes and endocrinology, which ranked fifth best.

Several areas showed marked improvement, Harder said.

“They’re sixth best in the nation for cardiology and heart surgery,” he said. Also, urology treatment rose from the top 20 to the top 10, and neonatology and nephrology made it into the top 20.

Complete standings can be found at: https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/pediatric-rankings?src=usn_pr