Children’s Hospitals Get High-Tech Revamps
CHICAGO — The University of Chicago’s new Comer Children’s Hospital is the latest in a nationwide construction boom at children’s hospitals and a gleaming example of the push for kid- and family-friendly facilities that are also medically state-of-the-art.
With 42-inch flat-screen TVs in the rooms, pullout couches for overnight guests and a no-parents-allowed rec room with a juke box, pinball machine and video games, youngsters could almost forget this is a hospital.
Even the medical equipment at Comer Children’s Hospital is hidden, stored in wall vaults with sliding doors camouflaged in colorful artwork.
"My kids say, ‘Dad, can I get sick?’" laughs Dr. Steve Goldstein, who was recruited from Yale last year to run the new $135 million hospital on Chicago’s South Side.
A 2003 survey from the National Association of Children’s Hospitals found that at least 41 of the nation’s 250 children’s hospitals had ongoing or recently completed construction projects. Among them: a newly opened $172 million children’s hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville; a $250 million children’s hospital in Denver slated to open in 2007; a $500 million expansion at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to open in 2008; and a $1.1 billion expansion at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to open in 2010.
The boom stems from changes in U.S. health care that have left children’s hospitals with a larger share of a shrinking market, said Lawrence McAndrews, president of the National Association of Children’s Hospitals. With managed care’s emphasis on hospitalizing only the sickest patients, most children needing hospital care are now sent to children’s hospitals.
Children’s hospitals are "repackaging" themselves to attract patients and top doctors, and the children-centered features, cheerful decor and real-people feedback used at Comer are a key ingredient, McAndrews said.
In the traditional teaching hospital, "you’d open the doors and see a guy in a gray coat with a book who looked like Socrates in modern garb" – not a very welcoming image for sick children, McAndrews said. "Today, the message is, ‘How can we make you feel at home and how can we create an environment that will enhance the healing process?’"
The original design for Comer’s patient rooms, for example, had bathrooms visible from the corridor. Patients complained that would be too revealing, so the bathrooms were tucked discreetly out of view, Goldstein said.
Patients also helped pick the hospital’s interior color scheme – cornflower blue and gold, rather than hospital green.
Jackie Tusack, a 13-year-old from Monee who has had 32 surgeries at the University of Chicago for a recurring facial tumor, is on a youth advisory board that helped with the design. The elevators and their pastel illuminated ceilings that change colors are her favorite feature.
"It’s just got so much stuff that they didn’t have at the old place," she said. "I really love it."
Goldstein, 47, built a national reputation during a decade at Yale studying the molecular mechanisms underlying disease, including abnormalities in electrical activity of nerves and muscles that can lead to ailments including sudden infant death syndrome and life-threatening heart arrhythmias.
When he moved to University of Chicago, he brought some 15 Yale associates to help expand the pediatric research program at a new institute for molecular pediatric science, scheduled to open adjacent to the Comer building in 2007.
The University of Chicago is now No. 26 on U.S. News & World Report’s 2004 list of top hospital for pediatrics, behind crosstown-rival Children’s Memorial Hospital, ranked No. 9.
Publicly, both hospitals downplay any rivalry, but Children’s Memorial also has plans for upgrades and expansions, and Goldstein acknowledges, "The commitment is to be in the top 10 in pediatric medicine."
While his predecessor, Dr. Herbert Abelson, spearheaded planning for the new hospital before retiring last year, Goldstein was hired to polish its image.
His more immediate mission, though, is introducing staff, patients and their families to the new 155-bed hospital building, which is more than twice the size of the old gray facility across the street.
The old building blends in with the drab adult hospital next door. The angular new one, all shimmering glass and steel, is connected by an overhead walkway to the adult hospital but stands alone.
Operating rooms are outfitted with large ceiling-mounted TV monitors that zoom in and out with voice activation giving surgeons doing keyhole surgeries the sense of being inside the body, said pediatric surgery chief Dr. Donald Liu.
Other features aim to increase safety and reduce medical error – a must for cutting-edge children’s hospitals, McAndrews said. At Comer, these include nursing stations with views into two patient rooms each, and a hospital-wide air filtering system to reduce chances of spreading contaminants.
Praise for the new hospital comes even from competitors.
Dr. Kenneth Boyer, pediatrics chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, calls the Comer facility "magnificent" and says it was made possible only with an "extraordinary philanthropic contribution" – something all children’s hospitals covet, he said.
Land’s End founder Gary Comer and his wife, Frances, donated $21 million to build the hospital, one of the largest naming gifts to any children’s hospital in the United States.
Hiring Goldstein was a smart move, said Dr. Harvey Cohen, chief of staff at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
"He’s a brilliant young man," said Cohen, who taught Goldstein at Harvard Medical School and tried to recruit him to Stanford. "He’s going to help take the University of Chicago to that next great level."
—
On the Net: