VCU news

By Shira Pollard
Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU in the new 2014-15 Best Children’s Hospitals rankings.

Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU (CHoR) ranked No. 28 in nephrology.

The Best Children’s Hospitals rankings highlight U.S. News’s top 50 U.S. pediatric facilities in cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and urology. Eighty-nine hospitals ranked in at least one specialty, based on a combination of clinical data and reputation with pediatric specialists.

“We are proud to be among the nation’s top children’s hospitals for pediatric kidney care,” said Leslie G. Wyatt, senior vice president of children’s services and executive director of Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. “In 2010 we identified the need to advance pediatric kidney care in our community and responded by recruiting multiple specialists and a multidisciplinary team to meet the complex needs of patients and their families. Since the 2013 survey, our national ranking has risen significantly from 50 to 28, acknowledging the expertise of our team and excellent outcomes of the program.”

U.S. News introduced the Best Children’s Hospitals rankings in 2007 to help families of sick children find the best medical care available. The rankings open the door to an array of detailed information about each hospital’s performance.

Five-sixths of each hospital’s score relied on patient outcomes and the care-related resources each hospital makes available. To gather clinical data, U.S. News sent a clinical questionnaire to 183 pediatric hospitals. The remaining one-sixth of the score derived from a survey of 450 pediatric specialists and subspecialists in each specialty over three years. The 4,500 physicians were asked where they would send the sickest children in their specialty, setting aside location and expense.

“Every Best Children’s Hospital deserves high praise,” said U.S. News Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow. “We know how important it is to parents to have confidence in pediatric centers that show dedication and expertise in caring for a child facing a life-threatening, rare or demanding illness.”

“The elevation of our national ranking was a team effort across all of CHoR,” said Timothy Bunchman, M.D., professor and chief, CHoR’s Division of Nephrology. “Our patients often require comprehensive care from multiple pediatric specialists and benefit from collaborative research efforts that are available at full-service children’s hospitals like CHoR. Our continuum of nephrology care includes everything from prenatal counseling and collaboration with specialists in urology, to partnering with our neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. Our goal is to provide families with convenient access to optimal kidney care – across Central Virginia – downtown on our MCV Campus and at our community clinics from Fredericksburg to Williamsburg.”

Survival rates, adequacy of nurse staffing, procedure volume and much more can be viewed on http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/pediatric-rankings and will be published in the U.S. News “Best Hospitals 2015” guidebook, which will be available in August.