December 2, 2014

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Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus has been recognized as a top children’s hospital by the Leapfrog Group for the second consecutive year.

The Leapfrog Group is an organization that provides the only national, public comparison of hospitals across safety, quality and efficiency dimensions.

Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus is among an elite group of only nine children’s hospitals selected out of more than 1,400 rural, urban and children’s hospitals surveyed, and the only children’s hospital in Houston to be recognized with this prestigious distinction.

“We are honored to again be recognized as a top performing children’s hospital,” said Michelle Riley-Brown, president of Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus. “Our physicians, nurses and employees continuously strive to provide high quality care for our patients and families while keeping their safety our top priority.”

This year’s list of recognized hospitals includes 60 Top Rural Hospitals, 25 Top Urban Hospitals and nine Top Children’s Hospitals. To be selected as a Top Hospital, organizations must meet or exceed Leapfrog criteria in three critical areas of hospital care: how patients fare, resource use and management structures in place to prevent errors.

The Leapfrog Group was founded to work for improvements in health care safety, quality and affordability. The annual survey is the only voluntary effort of its kind. The Top Hospitals will be honored at Leapfrog’s Annual Meeting on December 2 in Arlington, Virginia, which gathers key decision-makers from Leapfrog’s network of purchaser members, industry partners, health care stakeholders and national collaborators.

For more information, or to see a complete list of The Leapfrog Group’s 2014 Top Hospitals, visit www.leapfroggroup.org/news.

November 11, 2014

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The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) awarded a $1.8 million contract to Dr. William Whitehead, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital, to study ventriculoperitoneal shunt placement in pediatric patients with hydrocephalus, a medical condition in which there is an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles, or cavities, of the brain.

Whitehead and his research team will work with the Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network and the Hydrocephalus Association to conduct the study. The four-year randomized controlled trial will determine which shunt entry site results in the lowest rate of shunt failure.

The study is one of 46 proposals PCORI approved for funding to advance the field of comparative clinical effectiveness research providing patients, healthcare providers and other clinical decision-makers with information that will help them make better-informed choices.

“We believe that our study proposal will answer an important question and has the potential to significantly improve the care of pediatric patients with shunted hydrocephalus,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead’s study and other projects approved for funding by PCORI were selected from 490 applications through a highly competitive review process.

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Chief of Plastic Surgery Dr. Larry Hollier has been appointed to two new and exciting positions in the Department of Surgery – surgical director of patient experience and surgical director of the operating rooms.

Patient experience and operating room efficiency are critical areas of focus in our aspiration to deliver the highest level of service and care to our patients. Hollier has been instrumental in catalyzing improvements in these areas and in collaborating with colleagues from surgery, anesthesia, and operating room leadership. These new roles formalize our structural commitment to these efforts.

As surgical director of patient experience, Hollier will continue the exceptional work being done to improve patient and family experience. To date, he has played a key leadership role in implementing same-day appointments and direct scheduling for the Department of Surgery. These initiatives have helped improve our Texas Children’s Pediatrics referral processes and time to the third available appointment. Hollier also has led the following pilot projects to improve the experience of a patient’s arrival on the day of surgery:

  • New wayfinding system to help families find the different surgical areas;
  • Streamlined pre-surgery instructions to ensure consistent messaging for families; and
  • Addition of greeters to help families upon their arrival at the hospital.

As surgical director of the operating rooms, Hollier will partner with Dr. Steve Stayer and Judy Swanson in leading our operating theaters. This team will continue to work to improve efficiency in scheduling and the implementation of best practices, including developing focused specialty teams of nurses, anesthesiologists, and surgical staff.

111214ChesterKoh175-2The Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital recently awarded Dr. Chester Koh and Dr. Robert Williamson with $75,000 research awards.

Koh, a pediatric urologist at Texas Children’s and the director of the organization’s Robotic Surgery Program, earned the Denton A. Cooley Fellowship in Surgical Innovation Award, which is given to a physician whose surgical research focuses on innovative ways to help children and to save lives. Williamson, an otolaryngologist with Texas Children’s and a professor with Baylor College of Medicine, received the Outcomes Fellowship Award, which supports patient care, education and research.

Koh is an internationally recognized expert in minimally invasive surgery, and has been instrumental in developing minimally invasive techniques with both laparoscopic surgery and da Vinci® robotic surgery to treat children. The hospital’s program serves as a pediatric robotic surgery research and training center that collaborates with other institutions in the Texas Medical Center.

Williamson studies functional outcomes of cochlear implants and the effects of language spoken by the implant team and by the family of the child who receives the implant. Little data is available on outcomes in implant recipients where the native language spoken in the home is different from that spoken by members of the cochlear implant team.

Williamson’s study will retrospectively analyze and compare cochlear implant recipients from non-native English-speaking households to recipients from English-speaking households, and analyze outcomes from patients with similar clinical characteristics.

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Two research residents with the Department of Surgery were recently recognized at the International Pediatric Surgical Oncology and International Society of Pediatric Oncology meeting in Toronto.

Dr. Yan Shi won best overall paper for his work on “MDM4 is a Potential Novel Therapeutic Target in Hepatoblastoma.” Shi is a research resident in the lab of Dr. Sanjeev Vasudevan, a pediatric surgeon at Texas Children’s and an assistant professor in the Division of Pediatric Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Yesenia Rojas’ paper, “Adrenocortical Carcinoma in Children: A Review of the National Cancer Database,” was chosen as one of four papers presented in the “Best of International Pediatric Surgical Oncology” session and will be fast-tracked for rapid publication in “Pediatric Blood and Cancer.” Rojas is a research resident in the lab of Dr. Jed Nuchtern, who is chief of pediatric surgery at Texas Children’s.

November 4, 2014

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Advanced Practice Providers got a special visit from Dr. Patch Adams at their annual luncheon. Adams gained fame after being portrayed by Robin Williams in the Hollywood movie named for him.

Award recipients were:

Nurse Practitioner of the Year: Jessica Geer
Physician Assistant of the Year: Teri Baierlipp
Advanced Practice Provider Preceptor of the Year: Lois Tracy
Advanced Practice Provider Novice of the Year: Jennifer Barrera
Physician Partner of the Year: Dr. Terry Yen

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Dr. Joshua Shulman recently received the prestigious Grass Foundation-American Neurological Association (ANA) award in Neuroscience at the annual ANA conference in Baltimore. This award recognizes young investigators for their outstanding contributions to neuroscience research.

Shulman is an investigator at the Jan and Dan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s and an assistant professor of neurology, neuroscience, and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.

His current research explores the genetic susceptibility and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. His work integrates genetic investigation in human subjects and fruit fly models, with the goal of understanding brain function and aging, and improving the treatment of neurologic disease.

Shulman received a B.A. in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in genetics from Cambridge University in Cambridge, MA. He earned his medical degree and M.M.Sc degree in clinical investigation from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.

Shulman completed his residency and fellowship training in the Harvard/Partners Neurology Program at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Before moving to Houston, he was an associate neurologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Among his previous honors, Shulman received a Career Award for Medical Scientists from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the C.W. Cotterman Award from the American Society of Human Genetics.

Click here to learn more about Shulman’s research at the NRI.