Pediatric Specialty Hospital Reconfiguration Project

Details

Category: News Articles

Created on Thursday, 07 April 2011 20:20

The Pediatric Specialty Hospital at The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh & Lemieux Family Center has recently reconfigured its space, to meet the needs of a changing patient population. We invite you to learn more about these changes and see the progress of reconfiguration.

What is the Pediatric Specialty Hospital?

In 1984, The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh opened the doors of Transitional Infant Care (T.IC.), to care for premature infants as they transitioned from the hospital to home. With The Children’s Home’s move to 5324 Penn Avenue in 2007, T.I.C. was transformed into the 28-bed Pediatric Specialty Hospital, caring for infants, children, and teenagers, ages birth to 21. With physicians from Neonatology, Pulmonology, Transplant, and the Diagnostic Referral Group rounding at the facility, and a collaboration with Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC’s Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Clinical Nutrition, and Physical and Occupational Therapy, The Children’s Home is now able to serve more extensive diagnoses as well as implement the Family Centered Feeding Program into a home-like setting.

Types of Patients

The move to Penn Avenue brought about a change in the types of patients that transfer to The Children’s Home. The Pediatric Specialty Hospital, while still admitting neonates, is also now caring for infants, children, and teenagers facing:

• Pre/post transplants
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Cardiac problems
• Abdominal wall defects
• Chronic ventilation
• Infectious diseases
• End of life
• Multiple congenital anomalies
• Feeding issues
• Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

Reconfiguration: Taking Patient Care to the Next Level

With a changing and growing patient population, The Children’s Home & Lemieux Family Center has taken steps to reconfigure the Pediatric Specialty Hospital in order to enhance patient care and accommodations for families.

The reconfiguration of the Pediatric Specialty Hospital, to provide more private rooms will:

• Provide isolation for patients with infectious diseases
• Reverse isolation for patients that are immunodeficient
• Enhance privacy for families to nest when they are not yet ready to function independently in the family living area

The reconfiguration project on the Green Unit of the Pediatric Specialty Hospital was completed on January 19, 2011 and the Orange Unit was completed on April 7, 2011. See pictures of the Green Unit and Orange Unit, throughout the reconfiguration process.