Boston Children's Hospital and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have tied for first place an annual survey of the nation's best medical facilities for pediatric care.

Published by U.S. News & World Report, the Best Children's Hospitals 2014-15 rankings also lists Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center as third, Texas and Children's Hospital in Houston as number four.

Children's Hospital Los Angeles rounds out the top five care centers.

Designed to help families of children with life-threatening or rare conditions find the best medical care available, the list, now in its eighth year, names the the top 50 U.S. hospitals in each of 10 pediatric specialties: cancer, cardiology & heart surgery, diabetes & endocrinology, gastroenterology & gastrointestinal surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and, last but certainly not least, urology.

The new list -- which is can be accessed for free at https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/pediatric-rankings -- shows 89 total hospitals ranking in at least one of the 10 specialties.

Both the Boston and Philadelphia hospitals posted outstanding scores in all 10 specialties, while 10 from the overall 89 ranked hospitals, earned places on the Honor Roll.

"Finding care for a child with a life-threatening or rare condition is one of the most overwhelming experiences parents face," Ben Harder, managing editor of health care analysis at U.S. News, said in a news release. "We hope the rankings and information in Best Children's Hospitals help make a family's search for the best care possible for their child a little easier."

"Each year, we strive to hone the methodology and improve the rankings' usefulness to families," said Avery Comarow, U.S. News health rankings editor. "With the input of working groups of pediatric medical experts, we've made these changes to better measure care in each specialty."

The 2014-15 Best Children's Hospital Honor Roll

  1. Boston Children's Hospital
  2. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
  3. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
  4. Texas Children's Hospital, Houston
  5. Children's Hospital Los Angeles
  6. Children's Hospital Colorado, Aurora
  7. Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
  8. Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
  9. Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
  10. Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Baltimore

Developed exclusively by U.S. News & World Report's Health Care Analysis team, the Best Children's Hospitals rankings are part of the news outlet's mission to provide "trusted information and rankings that help Americans navigate complex health care issues, from finding hospitals and doctors to health insurance and nursing homes," the release said.

In an effort to gather clinical data, U.S. News sent a questionnaire to 183 pediatric hospitals. Five-sixths (83.3 percent) of each hospital's score relied on patient outcomes and the care-related resources each hospital provides. The last one-sixth (16.7 percent) of the score was derived from three years' of responses to an annual survey of an estimated 150 pediatric care providers in each specialty.