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“We salute Women & Infants Hospital,” said Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow. “The goal of the Best Children’s Hospitals rankings is to call attention to pediatric centers with the expertise to help the sickest kids, and Women & Infants Hospital is one of those centers.”
In July, Women & Infants was ranked 26th in Gynecology in U.S. News & World Report’s 2010-11 Best Hospitals. Earlier this spring, Women & Infants was ranked number one in the Providence metro area (including Providence and Pawtucket, RI, and Fall River and New Bedford, MA) in U.S. News & World Report’s first ever Best Hospitals metro area rankings, and a regional Best Hospital in Cancer and Gynecology.
“The care that we provide not only to full-term newborns, but also to the tiniest, frailest infants, is extraordinary, and we are so proud to have that level of care acknowledged,” said Constance A. Howes, president and CEO of Women & Infants Hospital. “This continued recognition, now being named a Best Children’s Hospital in Neonatology, gives the general and the health care community the reassurance of the high quality, compassionate care that is provided each and every day here at Women & Infants Hospital.”
As the birthing place to nearly 9,000 babies each year, Women & Infants cares for newborns from the edges of viability to full-term newborns, in the hospital and after discharge. In collaboration with colleagues in pediatric surgery and all of the pediatric subspecialties at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Women & Infants provides care for sophisticated, complex problems of high-risk newborns born throughout southern New England. Babies born at Women & Infants represent 73% of those born in Rhode Island each year, as well as many from southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Connecticut.
In 2009, Women & Infants opened the nation’s largest single-family room neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to provide the best possible care in the best possible environment for critically ill newborns.
“The single-family room NICU expands the field of neonatology from ‘survival’ to ‘quality of life, ’” said James F. Padbury, MD, pediatrician-in-chief at Women & Infants, and the Oh-Zopfi Professor of Pediatrics for Perinatal Research at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “Women & Infants’ new NICU is a developmentally sensitive unit that promises to enhance infant growth and development by allowing us to adjust the noise, light, temperature and medical interventions in each room based on each patient’s need. We believe that controlling the environment will decrease dependence on respiratory support, decrease the incidence of complications, improve weight gain, shorten the hospital stay, and improve the infant’s developmental outcome. Moreover, we anticipate the greatest impact on the smallest, most fragile infants.”
The new rankings recognize the top 50 children’s hospitals in 10 specialties – cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology, and urology. Seventy-six hospitals are ranked in at least one specialty.
Now in its fifth year, Best Children’s Hospitals pulls together clinical and operational data from a lengthy survey, completed by the majority of the 177 hospitals asked to participate in the 2011-12 rankings. The survey asks hundreds of questions about survival rates, nurse staffing, subspecialist availability, and many more pieces of critical information difficult or impossible for those in charge of the care of a child to find on their own. The data from the survey is combined with recommendations from pediatric specialists on the hospitals they consider best for children with challenging problems.
For the full rankings and methodology, visit usnews.com/childrenshospitals.
About Women & Infants Hospital
Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (womenandinfants.org), a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation’s leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. A U.S.News Best Hospital in Gynecology and Best Children’s Hospital in Neonatology, Women & Infants was ranked number one in the Providence metro area and a top hospital in Cancer and Gynecology. The primary teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, as well as a number of specialized programs in women’s medicine, Women & Infants is the seventh largest obstetrical service in the country with more than 8,500 deliveries per year. In 2009, Women & Infants opened the country’s largest, single-family room neonatal intensive care unit.
New England’s premier hospital for women and newborns, Women & Infants and Brown offer fellowship programs in gynecologic oncology, maternal-fetal medicine, urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, neonatal-perinatal medicine, pediatric and perinatal pathology, gynecologic pathology and cytopathology, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. It is home to the nation’s only mother-baby perinatal psychiatric partial hospital, as well as the nation’s only fellowship program in obstetric medicine.
Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Center of Excellence from the American College of Radiography; a Center for In Vitro Maturation Excellence by SAGE In Vitro Fertilization; a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence by the National Institutes of Health; and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Gynecologic Oncology Group.
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