By Nicholas Roznovsky and Jess Berthold
UCSF Health provides top-ranked pediatric and adolescent behavioral health services at a variety of locations, including the UCSF Child, Teen and Family Center at the Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building (left) and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco (center) and Oakland (left).
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals and the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences have been recognized as one of the nation's top providers of pediatric and adolescent behavioral health care in U.S. News & World Report's 2024-2025 Best Children's Hospitals list.
As this year's list was the first to include pediatric and adolescent behavioral health as a separately ranked speciality, U.S. News chose to collectively provide the country's top 50 hospitals with equal recognition rather than provide relative ordinal rankings. UCSF was one of seven providers in California so honored and one of three University of California health institutions (along with UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and UC Davis Children's Hospital) included in the top echelon.
The recognition encompasses all of UCSF Health's child and adolescent clinical mental health services, including not only those specifically at UCSF Benioff's Children Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco, but also a wide variety of outpatient clinical services provided though the UCSF Child, Teen and Family Center at the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building and other locations across the San Francisco Bay Area.
U.S. News evaluated 84 hospitals for their care of children and teens mental and behavioral health conditions such as autism, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, ADHD, gender dysphoria, bipolar, schizophrenia, language and learning disorders, and substance abuse and addiction. Unlike its rankings for adult behavioral health services, which have been historically calculated solely on ratings from psychiatric specialists, U.S. News' pediatric evaluations also incorporated a variety of structural measures of clinical care. Those measures include the ability to swiftly get patients into specialized care, medication safety screening, prevention of side effects, and availability of specially trained staff, clinical support services, specialized clinics and programs, and emergency/urgent care.
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals once again recognized for excellence in all specialties
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals were tied as the best hospitals overall in Northern California in the 2024-2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Children’s Hospitals list, marking the ninth straight year that the hospitals have been ranked in all of the specialty categories assessed in the annual survey. Together, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco were placed among the top 25 children’s hospitals nationwide in eight pediatric specialties, including cancer, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and GI surgery, kidney care (nephrology), newborn specialty care (neonatology), neurology and neurosurgery, pulmonology and lung surgery, and urology. In addition to behavioral health, the hospitals also were recognized nationally in cardiology and heart surgery, and orthopedics.
“UCSF Health’s pediatric care teams are driven by a deeply seated belief that every child deserves access to world-class health care delivered with compassion and convenience in mind,” said Suresh Gunasekaran, president and chief executive officer of UCSF Health. “Receiving this national recognition year after year affirms our conviction that success is defined by putting patients and families first, while always striving to do better.”
The UCSF Benioff Hospitals were ranked as the best children’s hospitals in Northern California for cancer care, cardiology and heart surgery, and urology. The hospitals tied as the No. 3 children’s hospitals in the state and No. 4 in the Pacific Region, which includes Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington.
The annual U.S. News rankings serve as a guide to hospitals nationwide that excel in treating children with the most challenging diagnoses. Of the 198 children’s hospitals eligible this year, 88 hospitals were ranked among the top 50 in at least one specialty. Each facility was either a freestanding children’s hospital or an autonomous, multidisciplinary pediatric department within a major medical center.
The complete list of children’s hospital rankings is available online and will be published in the Best Hospitals print guide in November. U.S. News published this year’s adult hospital rankings in July.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
