Texas Children's Hospital (Houston). Texas Children's Hospital is a 595-bed Magnet-recognized facility. The hospital was nationally ranked in 10 pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report, including cancer, diabetes and endocrinology, neonatology, neurology and neurosurgery and urology, to name a few. In 2014, Texas Children's Hospital West Campus was recognized by Leapfrog as one of only nine Top Children's Hospitals in the country.
Texas Children's admitted its first patient — a 3-year-old Leigh Van Wagner — on Feb. 1, 1954, so beginning the hospital's journey. When the pediatric hospital first opened it was three stories tall and had 106 beds. Since then, Texas Children's made its mark with many "firsts," including hiring Texas' first and (at the time) only female pediatric surgeon Benjy F. Brooks, MD; pioneering a procedure in 1964 to separate a pair of twins joined at the chest; launching Houston's first pediatric program for liver transplants and establishing the nation's first pediatric health maintenance organization.
In 2013, Texas Children's had roughly 3.2 million patient encounters, and surgeons there performed 26,000 surgeries. Mark A. Wallace serves as Texas Children's president and CEO, a position he took appointed in 1989 when he was 36 years old.