The concerted effort to improve medical services for children in Gainesville seems to be paying off.

Three year-old Sebastian Ferrero's death due to a medical mistake in 2007 launched a community-wide effort to create a stand- alone children's hospital.

 

That led to major upgrades at Shands, which is now being recognized among the best in the nation.

Among the categories they did the best in were diabetes and endocrinology, ranking 13th in the United States.
To give you an idea of where the hospital falls, U.S. News surveyed 178 pediatric centers.

Going from not even making it into any rankings in 2009  to scoring among some of the best is a move the hospital can use to motivate its staff and physicians, whom they say are at the core of the accomplishment.

 

Dr. Scott Rivkees, Chairman of the pediatric department says "if you look at programs our size, there's no program in the United States that did better than us in terms of the rankings so this means we are really in the upper echelon of pediatric hospitals in the United States."

 

Dr. Michael Good, the Dean of the UF College of Medicine says "I do think the best part of this is when a physician sees a patient and then they see that patient get better, [this ranking] adds energy to that effort when they see others recognizing them."

 

U.S. News says that of the 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. only about 1 in 30 of those have what they call "rock-solid expertise" in caring for kids.

The hospital that ranked the best overall was Boston Children's Hospital.

 

The last on the diabetes list where Shands Children's Hospital ranked was Miami Children's Hospital.

 

You can read more about the rankings here on U.S. News.