SALT LAKE CITY — Primary Children’s Hospital has reached a new medical milestone, securing national rankings in the latest U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospitals list in every pediatric specialty.
The hospital was ranked in all 11 pediatric specialties evaluated by U.S. News for the second consecutive year. In six of those specialties, Primary Children’s Hospital achieved a Top 25 ranking, marking a significant medical milestone that benefits families and patients across the region.
The hospital’s highest ranking came in cardiology and heart surgery, at No. 12 nationally. Other specialties achieving Top 25 status include:
- Neurology and neurosurgery: 16th
- Nephrology: 18th
- Gastroenterology and GI Surgery: 20th
- Orthopedics: 22nd
- Urology: 22nd
The hospital also placed in the Top 50 in the remaining specialties, including cancer (37th), neonatology (39th), behavioral health and pulmonology and lung surgery (42nd).
“What’s interesting is you usually see this kind of performance in really large metro areas — Boston, Houston, Philadelphia — where they’ve got large organizations and large populations of kids to draw from,” said Dustin Lipson, president of Primary Children’s Hospital and regional president of children’s health for Intermountain Health. “So, for a city of our size, and to punch at the weight we’re punching, is really exceptional and extraordinary.”
As the only children’s hospital in a 400,000-square-mile area, Primary Children’s serves patients from all 50 states every year, making it a national resource.
“You can’t be OK in one thing and mediocre at another and great at another. From our perspective, it’s essential that we are strong in every area,” Lipson said.
The hospital’s defining characteristic is that it specializes in pediatrics, a crucial fact that cannot be overstated, especially when parents consider taking a young child to a general facility instead of a dedicated children’s hospital.
“We often say that children are not small adults. They have different diseases, different needs, different considerations,” Lipson said. “So whether it’s super specialty training of the physician, whether it’s the pediatric training … we bring all of these other therapeutic components together to support a child.”
It is important to take into consideration and know the unique opportunity Utah families have for the health and well-being of their child, being in close proximity to the hospital, from smaller scopes to smaller scales, and having the right doctors who specialize in that type of care.
While most adults understand the MRI procedure, ensuring a 2-year-old remains still during a scan presents a challenge. Primary Children’s Hospital addresses this by sedating young patients, a practice that might not be available in a general hospital setting.
“That’s why it takes places like Primary Children’s to do what we do,” Lipson continued, “and it’s why we see the kind of rankings and results that we have, is because we invest in that kind of super specialization of teams.”
The facility just opened a 24/7 behavioral health emergency department in Taylorsville in August. The center is vital to the community, offering an always-open walk-in crisis center for kids and teens in need of support.
One of the patients who benefited from the care provided at Primary Children’s Hospital is Rachel Glade.
“Rachel has had multiple heart, lung, gastrointestinal and feeding therapies, among other treatments and surgeries, from the day she was born and throughout her life,” a press release from the hospital says.
Glade, who is also hard of hearing, was treated by the Primary Children’s behavioral health team for several years.
“I had suffered through a ton of medical trauma, and on top of that, I couldn’t hear the voices that tried to comfort me,” Glade said in sign language at the opening of the Taylorsville campus. “It is incredibly important for kids to receive mental health support when they are young so that they can enter adulthood with life skills.”
Looking ahead, the hospital remains committed to serving the community and expanding access to care.
“These results really are a milestone achievement for our community and for us as a facility, and we’re just over the moon to see the recognition really represented so well,” Lipson said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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