Tag Archive for: outcomes

Children’s National ranked No. 6 overall and No. 1 for newborn care by U.S. News

Children’s National in Washington, D.C., is the nation’s No. 6 children’s hospital and, for the third year in a row, its neonatology program is No.1 among all children’s hospitals providing newborn intensive care, according to the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals annual rankings for 2019-20.

This is also the third year in a row that Children’s National has been in the top 10 of these national rankings. It is the ninth straight year it has ranked in all 10 specialty services, with five specialty service areas ranked among the top 10.

“I’m proud that our rankings continue to cement our standing as among the best children’s hospitals in the nation,” says Kurt Newman, M.D., President and CEO for Children’s National. “In addition to these service lines, today’s recognition honors countless specialists and support staff who provide unparalleled, multidisciplinary patient care. Quality care is a function of every team member performing their role well, so I credit every member of the Children’s National team for this continued high performance.”

The annual rankings recognize the nation’s top 50 pediatric facilities based on a scoring system developed by U.S. News. The top 10 scorers are awarded a distinction called the Honor Roll.

“The top 10 pediatric centers on this year’s Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll deliver outstanding care across a range of specialties and deserve to be nationally recognized,” says Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. “According to our analysis, these Honor Roll hospitals provide state-of-the-art medical expertise to children with rare or complex conditions. Their rankings reflect U.S. News’ assessment of their commitment to providing high-quality, compassionate care to young patients and their families day in and day out.”

The bulk of the score for each specialty is based on quality and outcomes data. The process also includes a survey of relevant specialists across the country, who are asked to list hospitals they believe provide the best care for patients with challenging conditions.

Below are links to the five specialty services that U.S. News ranked in the top 10 nationally:

The other five specialties ranked among the top 50 were cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastro-intestinal surgery, orthopedics, and urology.

Mark Batshaw

40 years, 8 editions: Writing “Children With Disabilities”

Mark Batshaw

Forty years ago, Mark L. Batshaw, M.D., almost singlehandedly wrote a 23-chapter first edition that ran about 300 pages. Now Dr. Batshaw’s tome, “Children With Disabilities,” is in its eighth edition, and this new volume is almost 1,000 pages, with 42 chapters, two co-editors and over 35 authors from Children’s National.

Back in 1978, Mark L. Batshaw, M.D., was a junior faculty member at John’s Hopkins University School of Medicine. In the evenings he taught a course in the university’s School of Education  titled “The Medical and Physical Aspects of the Handicapped Child,” for Master’s level special education students. Because no textbook at that time focused on that specific topic, Batshaw developed his own slide set.

“At the end of the first year of teaching the course my students said ‘You really ought to consider writing a text book based on your slides to help us move forward,’ ” Dr. Batshaw recalls. The father of three carved out time by writing on weekends and at night, cutting back on sleep.

His first goal was to create a textbook that would serve as a curriculum for a series of courses that would be taught at universities to specialists who work with children with disabilities, including social workers, physical and occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, special education teachers, nurses, doctors and dentists.

“I wanted to cover the whole range of disabilities and divided the book initially into a series of sections, including embryology, to help students understand what can go wrong in fetal development to lead to a developmental disability; and chapters on each developmental disability, including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), cerebral palsy, learning disabilities and traumatic brain injury,” he says. “The third section was devoted to available treatments, including occupational and physical therapy, speech language therapy, nutrition and medications. The final section focused on outcomes.”

His second aim was for the book to serve as a reference text for professionals in the field. The 33-year-old contacted a brand-new new publisher, Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., that focused on special education. “They took a chance on me, and I took a chance on them,” he says.

Forty years ago, he almost singlehandedly produced a 23-chapter first edition that ran about 300 pages. Now Dr. Batshaw’s tome is in its eighth edition, and this new volume is almost 1,000 pages. And, rather than being its sole author, Dr. Batshaw enlisted two co-editors and at least five dozen authors who contributed specialty expertise in genetic counseling, social work, physical and occupational therapy, medicine and nursing. His daughter, Elissa, a special education teacher and school psychologist, authored a chapter about special education services, and his son, Drew, an executive at a start-up company, contributed autobiographical letters about the effect ADHD has had on his life.

The book, “Children With Disabilities,” also includes:

  • A glossary of medical terms so that as the reader reviews patient reports they can easily look up an unfamiliar term
  • An appendix on commonly used drugs to treat children with disabilities in order to look up the medicine by name and see the range of doses
  • An appendix devoted to different syndromes children might have
  • A reference section with organizations and foundations that help children with disabilities
  • A web site with sections designed for students and other content designed for teachers with thought questions to guide practical use of information in each chapter and more than 450 customizable PowerPoint slides for download
  • Call-out boxes for interdisciplinary team members, such as genetic counselors, explaining the roles they serve and their educational background, and
  • Excerpts of recent research articles.

“The students say they don’t sell the book. Usually when students have a textbook, they try to sell it second hand after the course ends,” explains Dr. Batshaw, now Executive Vice President, Physician-in-Chief and Chief Academic Officer at Children’s National. “Instead, students keep it and use it as a practical reference as they become professionals in their field. It has had the impact I had hoped for both as a textbook and a reference book: They say they refer to it when they have patients with a particular disorder they’re not used to treating to read up on it.”

Now a bestseller, there are more than 200,000 copies in print, including Portuguese and Ukrainian translations. “It didn’t start that way. It grew organically,” he says.

In addition to Dr. Batshaw, Children’s contributors to “Children With Disabilities” include Nicholas Ah Mew, M.D., pediatric geneticist; Nickie N. Andescavage, M.D., neonatologist; Mackenzie E. Brown, D.O., fellow in Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine; Justin M. Burton, M.D., chief, Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine; Gabrielle Sky Cardwell, BA, clinical research assistant; Catherine Larsen Coley, PT, DPT, PCS, physical therapist; Laurie S. Conklin, M.D., pediatric gastroenterologist; Denice Cora-Bramble, M.D., MBA, executive vice president and chief medical officer; Heather de Beaufort, M.D., pediatric ophthalmologist; Dewi Frances T. Depositario-Cabacar, M.D., pediatric neurologist; Lina Diaz-Calderon, M.D., fellow in Pediatric Gastroenterology; Olanrewaju O. Falusi, M.D., associate medical director of municipal and regional affairs, Child Health Advocacy Institute; Melissa Fleming, M.D., pediatric rehabilitation specialist; William Davis Gaillard, M.D., chief Division of Epilepsy, Neurophysiology and Critical Care; Satvika Garg, Ph.D., occupational therapist; Virginia C. Gebus, R.N., MSN, APN, CNSC, nutritionist; Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant chief, Division of Emergency Medicine; Andrea Gropman, M.D., chief, Division of Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics and Neurogenetics, geneticist and Neurodevelopmental pediatrician; Mary A. Hadley, BS, senior executive assistant; Susan Keller, MLS., MS-HIT, research librarian; Lauren Kenworthy, Ph.D., director, Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders; Monisha S. Kisling, MS, CGC, genetic counselor; Eyby Leon, M.D., pediatric geneticist; Erin MacLeod, Ph.D., RD, LD, director, Metabolic Nutrition; Margaret B. Menzel, MS, CGC, genetic counselor; Shogo John Miyagi, Ph.D., PharmD, BCPPS, Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology fellow; Mitali Y. Patel, DDS, program director, Pediatric Dentistry; Deborah Potvin, Ph.D., neuropsychologist; Cara E. Pugliese, Ph.D., clinical psychologist; Khodayar Rais-Bahrami, M.D., neonatologist and director, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Program; Allison B. Ratto, Ph.D., clinical psychologist; Adelaide S. Robb, M.D., chief, Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; Joseph Scafidi, D.O., neonatal neurologist; Erik Scheifele, D.M.D., chief, Division of Oral Health; Rhonda L. Schonberg, MS, CGC, genetic counselor; Billie Lou Short, M.D., chief, Division of Neonatology; Kara L. Simpson, MS, CGC, genetic counselor; Anupama Rao Tate, D.M.D., MPH, pediatric dentist; Lisa Tuchman, M.D., MPH, chief, Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine; Johannes N. van den Anker, M.D., Ph.D., FCP, chief, Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Vice Chair of Experimental Therapeutics; Miriam Weiss, CPNP-PC, nurse practitioner; and Tesfaye Getaneh Zelleke, M.D., pediatric neurologist.

Nickie Andescavage

To understand the preterm brain, start with the fetal brain

Nickie Andescavage

“My best advice to future clinician-scientists is to stay curious and open-minded; I doubt I could have predicted my current research interest or described the path between the study of early oligodendrocyte maturation to in vivo placental development, but each experience along the way – both academic and clinical – has led me to where I am today,” Nickie Andescavage, M.D., writes.

Too often, medical institutions erect an artificial boundary between caring for the developing fetus inside the womb and caring for the newborn whose critical brain development continues outside the womb.

“To improve neonatal outcomes, we must transform our current clinical paradigms to begin treatment in the intrauterine period and continue care through the perinatal transition through strong collaborations with obstetricians and fetal-medicine specialists,” writes Nickie Andescavage, M.D., an attending in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Children’s National.

Dr. Andescavage’s commentary was published online March 25, 2019, in Pediatrics Research and accompanies recently published Children’s research about differences in placental development in the setting of placental insufficiency. Her commentary is part of a new effort by Nature Publishing Group to spotlight research contributions from early career investigators.

The placenta, an organ shared by a pregnant woman and the developing fetus, plays a critical but underappreciated role in the infant’s overall health. Under the mentorship of Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of MRI Research of the Developing Brain, and Adré J. du Plessis, M.B.Ch.B., MPH, chief of the Division of Fetal and Transitional Medicine, Dr. Andescavage works with interdisciplinary research teams at Children’s National to help expand that evidence base. She has contributed to myriad published works, including:

While attending Cornell University as an undergraduate, Dr. Andescavage had an early interest in neuroscience and neurobehavior. As she continued her education by attending medical school at Columbia University, she corroborated an early instinct to work in pediatrics.

It wasn’t until the New Jersey native began pediatric residency at Children’s National that those complementary interests coalesced into a focus on brain autoregulation and autonomic function in full-term and preterm infants and imaging the brains of both groups. In normal, healthy babies the autonomic nervous system regulates heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, breathing and other involuntary activities. When these essential controls go awry, babies can struggle to survive and thrive.

“My best advice to future clinician-scientists is to stay curious and open-minded; I doubt I could have predicted my current research interest or described the path between the study of early oligodendrocyte maturation to in vivo placental development, but each experience along the way – both academic and clinical – has led me to where I am today,” Dr. Andescavage writes in the commentary.