U.S. News & World Report announced Tuesday "several noteworthy changes" to its methodology for ranking the nation's children's hospitals.
Here are three of the major updates.
1. U.S. News will now include adjusted mortality from the Congenital Heart Surgery Database for its Pediatric Cardiology & Heart Surgery rankings. Adjusted mortality will account for 20 percent of hospitals' overall cardiology score. Additionally, outcomes measures in general will account for 38.3 percent of hospitals' scores in that specialty, up from 33.3 percent last year. As a result, a hospital's reputation will only make up 8.5 percent of the score in the cardiology category, instead of 15 percent.
2. For the Best Children's Hospitals Honor Roll, pediatric hospitals will receive up to 25 Honor Roll points per specialty, based on their specialty ranking. The first-ranked hospital in a specialty will receive 25 points, and the second-ranked hospital will receive 24 points, and so on. The 10 hospitals with the most points across specialties will be on the Honor Roll. More than 10 hospitals can be on the Honor Roll if there are ties.
Previously to appear on the Honor Roll hospitals had to rank in the top 10 percent of hospitals in three or more specialties, and the rank order was determined by total points (hospitals in the top 5 percent in a specialty received one points, and those in the next five percent got one point.) Find more information here.
3. U.S. News will publicly identify individuals and institutions that make up the working groups that review survey questions and give advice on how to best use the data U.S. News collects. One working group exists for each specialty, and two working groups with expertise in radiology and infection prevention give input across specialties. Members include researchers, clinicians and hospital coding experts.
Editor's note: The weight given to hospital reputation for pediatric cardiology and heart surgery will be 8.5 percent, not 10 percent as originally reported by U.S. News. This article was updated on June 5 to reflect the new information.