Children's growth to make access easier
Expansions in Waltham and Boston coming this summer
Children's Hospital Boston is one of the largest pediatric medical centers in the United States, and yet one of the biggest challenges the hospital faces is access to care. Hospital officials hope that will begin to change over the next several months with the opening of the new Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham site and the new clinical building expansion on the Boston campus.
"Right now patients and their families often have to wait weeks or even months to access Children's services," says Chief Operating Officer Sandra Fenwick. "By building additional capacity—both physically and with new staff—we hope to decrease that wait time to two weeks or less, thereby increasing access to care and improving customer service."
Early in June, Children's will open Phase I of the Waltham site. The plan calls for development of 21,000 of the 200,000 square feet currently available, and will position Children's to provide an array of clinical programs and services in the ambulatory clinic setting (see sidebar at right).
Mark Marcantano, vice president of Ambulatory and Network Services, says Children's hopes to conduct more than 20,000 patient visits at the new location in FY 06. "Phase I will allow us to begin decompressing the bustling Longwood campus and bring the highest quality pediatric care closer to our patients in the western suburbs," he says. Plans for Phase II are currently in the works.
Children's is looking to recruit qualified staff for the Waltham site, including physicians interested in building community-based specialty clinical practices while maintaining a connection to academic medicine.
"Having the right people is essential," Marcantano says. "We want our patients to know they're getting the same caliber of care they get in Boston."
Current needs for staff in Waltham also include:
- Nursing staff
- Clinical staff
- Administrative staff
- Allied health professionals
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Programs and services to be offered at Waltham:
- Adolescent Medicine
- Allergy
- Cardiology
- Dermatology
- Endocrinology
- Gastroenterology
- General Surgery
- Neurology
- Nutrition
- Ophthalmology
- Orthopedic Surgery
- Otolaryngology
- Plastic Surgery
- Renal
- Sports Medicine
- Urology
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June will also bring the opening of the Clinical Building Expansion on the Boston campus. The 11 story, 240,000 square foot building will contain intensive care, imaging, surgical and other patient care facilities. Highlights include 53 ICU beds (both cardiac and medical/surgical), interventional radiology space, a cardiac catheterization lab, inpatient echo facilities, and eight operating rooms, including a state-of-the-art, first-of-its-kind pediatric MR-OR that will allow surgeons to pinpoint tumors during surgery using an MRI unit. There will also be two floors of patient rooms with 24 single beds each and one partial floor each for Radiology and Emergency Department Administration.
The additional square footage will allow for more efficient use of space on the main campus, improved patient flow and operations, and space to incorporate new technologies. It also gives Children's the chance to focus more on the experience of patient families. New amenities include a family bedspace and wardrobe in each ICU and patient room, and Internet access in all bedspaces and waiting rooms.
"This is a wonderful time in the history of Children's Hospital Boston," says Fenwick. "With our new location in Waltham and the expanded clinical space at our Boston campus, we're poised to make significant improvements in the quality of the care we provide our patients, and just as importantly, to improve the quality of the experience our families and referring clinicians have when they stay with us or send their patients to us for care."
April
2005
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