Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a children’s hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with its primary campus located in the University City neighborhood of West Philadelphia next to the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. It is one of the largest and oldest children’s hospitals in the world, and United States’ first hospital dedicated to the healthcare of children. CHOP has been ranked as the best children’s hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report and Parents Magazine in recent years. As of 2012, it was ranked number one in the nation by U.S. News for six out of ten specialties.[2] The hospital is located next to the University of Pennsylvania and its physicians serve as the pediatrics department of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

CHOP has 527 beds, almost 40 percent of which are allocated to neonatal, cardiac, and pediatric intensive care. Each year the hospital admits more than 28,000 children and more than 1,167,000 are seen in the emergency and outpatient departments.[3]

In 1855, Philadelphia had a population of about 460,000, and recorded 10,507 deaths. Leading causes of death were smallpox, typhoid, and scarlet fever. In the worst month of 1855, 300 children under 12 years old died, primarily of infectious diseases. A Philadelphia physician, Dr. Francis West Lewis, inspired by a visit to the new Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London (founded 1852), enlisted Drs. T. Hewson Bache and R. A .F. Penrose Sr. to found the first children’s hospital in North America.