Keeping kids connected
With the grand opening of Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham in June, the hospital is making it easier for families to get Children's-quality care without coming into the city.
More than 60 Children's clinicians will provide a variety of services at the new site, including Adolescent Medicine, Allergy, Audiology, Cardiology, Dermatology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, General Surgery, Nephrology, Neurology, Nutrition, Ophthalmology, Orthopedic Surgery, Otolaryngology, Plastic Surgery, Preventive Cardiology, Radiology, Sports Medicine and Urology.
Future plans include day surgery operating rooms; expanded radiology services, including magnetic resonance imaging capabilities; and even a full-service youth wellness center that would bring together everything from Sports Medicine to Cardiac Rehab to complementary therapies.
"Waltham is part of our plan to make it easier for patients to see Children's clinicians while making the Boston campus less congested," says Chief Operating Officer Sandra Fenwick.
For the fiscal year 2006, Children's hopes to conduct as many as 30,000 patient visits, with a goal of 70,000 to 100,000 over the next five years.
"The location is convenient, the parking is free, the facilities are fantastic, and patients still have access to the same top-notch team and technologies they do in Boston," says Steve Gordon, chief administrative officer of the Waltham site. "This is going to be a real winner for our patients and their families."
Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham isn't the only new place to get care. Construction is complete on the hospital's new clinical building expansion, Main South. Click here for an illustration showing some of the building's most exciting new features.
Children's Hospital Boston radiologists are always looking for ways to improve the quality of radiologic images without increasing the amount of radiation used to capture them. New imaging technology in the clinical building expansion, Main South, is helping them do just that...and more.
Used in cardiovascular and interventional radiology, single- and bi-plane imaging capture images at a reduced radiation dose, produce larger images with improved resolution and even obtain 3D images of blood vessels. These capabilities will benefit children with complex congenital and electrical problems in the heart, and will help diagnose and treat children with arteriovenous malformations and other vascular problems, particularly in the brain.
Bi-plane imaging is especially useful in capturing 3D images of complex anatomy since it allows radiologists and cardiologists to simultaneously get images from front to back and side to side.
Main South will also be home to the hospital's single-slice CT scanner, which will be used to perform imaging for complex biopsies, abscess drainages
and nerve blocks, freeing up the hospital's other CT scanners for diagnostic procedures.
Main South will also house the first cardiac MRI scanner dedicated to congenital heart disease in the U.S. It uses magnetic fields and radio waves to create high-quality cross-sectional and 3D images of the heart and blood vessels in real time without using radiation, and is specially designed for cardiac work. The scanner opens the door for MRI-guided interventions in the future. Children's Cardiac MRI Service hopes to use it to treat conditions like hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is a combination of several abnormalities of the heart and great blood vessels and many other types of complex congenital heart disease.
