May 29, 2018

On May 23, a day after the opening of phase one of Legacy Tower, another significant milestone was reached in Texas Children’s Hospital’s storied history. At 7:15 a.m., a 9-month-old boy was taken back to a new, state-of-the-art operating room for the first surgery in Legacy Tower, Texas Children’s new home for heart, intensive care and surgery.

Watch this video highlighting the clinical features of Legacy Tower, including the facility’s new operating and transitional ICU rooms.

Dr. Larry Hollier, surgeon-in-chief, Dr. Edward Buchanan, chief of plastic surgery, Dr. Howard Weiner, chief of neurosurgery, and Dr. Robert Dauser, neurosurgeon, along with a team of anesthesiologists, nurses, physician assistants and operating room staff, performed the successful craniofacial procedure. Following the surgery, the patient was taken to the hospital’s new neurological ICU, a first-of-its-kind unit dedicated to pediatric patients who require specialized neurological care.

“As the largest and busiest department of surgery in the country, we are called upon every day to perform some of the most complex surgeries on the sickest of children,” said Hollier. “Legacy Tower is an answer to those calls, and this is the first of many positive outcomes in our new home.”

Weiner agreed and said the new tower is a game changer that will allow various teams at Texas Children’s to offer better family-centric care.

“This is a huge day at Texas Children’s Hospital,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be here and to be part of something so transformational.”

Phase one of Legacy Tower, Texas Children’s 640,000-square-foot expansion, officially opened on May 22 with six technologically-advanced operating rooms for neurosurgery, orthopedics, plastic surgery, transplant and pediatric surgery – one with intraoperative MRI – and 84 ICU beds, including dedicated surgical, neurological and transitional ICU rooms. This milestone will help Texas Children’s continue to provide the highest-quality care possible to patients and families, particularly those children who are critically-ill.

Beginning at 7 a.m. on May 22, seven specially-trained clinical teams safely transported 45 critically-ill patients to their new, spacious, state-of-the-art critical care rooms. More than 150 Texas Children’s staff members were involved in the move, and the careful transfer of the patients took seven hours.

Click here to view a video and photo gallery of the patient move to Legacy Tower.

Dauser said the Legacy Tower, specifically the operating rooms and their location to other specialties and services, are fantastic.

“Having the ability to conduct an intraoperative MRI in a room adjacent to one of the ORs has tremendous advantages,” he said. “Having an ICU dedicated to neuro patients also is a plus.”

Buchanan said such features provide the perfect environment for him and his colleagues to treat some of the sickest and most complex patients in the country.

“We all are very excited,” he said.

The second phase of Legacy Tower will open in September and house Texas Children’s Heart Center®, ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for cardiology and heart surgery.

Ten-year-old Skye Jeary couldn’t believe her eyes as she was wheeled into her new, spacious room in Texas Children’s Legacy Tower. She was in awe when she saw the size of her room and commented on how she’ll have plenty of space to accommodate her stuffed unicorn and her mom who is in a wheelchair.

On May 22, Texas Children’s reached an historic milestone when the doors of Legacy Tower opened for the first time to care for our most critically ill patients. Beginning at 7 a.m., seven specially trained clinical teams began safely transporting 45 critically ill patients from the pediatric intensive care unit and progressive care unit in West Tower to their new, spacious, state-of-the-art critical care rooms in Legacy Tower.

More than 150 Texas Children’s staff members were involved in the patient move to Legacy Tower, and the careful transfer of the patients took seven hours, which was a lot sooner than originally anticipated due to the efficiency and effectiveness of the Legacy Tower teams involved on Move Day.

“The planning for the patient move was unbelievably detailed,” said Dr. Lara Shekerdemian, service chief of Critical Care Services at Texas Children’s. “The patient move involved nursing, administration, physicians, nurse practitioners, all members of the team as well as the amazing family support team that guided the families through what could have been a potentially overwhelming event for them.”

Patient and family services teams were assigned to each family member to help accompany and escort them from their current unit to the new unit in Legacy Tower and to get them settled in their new rooms.

“Our families were so excited about the move,” said Michelle Lawson, director of Texas Children’s Clinical Support Services. “They were being cheered on along the way and they were excited to be in their brand new space. They couldn’t believe we built it just for them.”

The Legacy Tower Go Live Support Center was set up on the fourth floor of Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women and comprised of 867 individuals from across the hospital system who focused on patient move tracking from West Tower to Legacy Tower. The team included support staff from Supply Chain, Security, BioMedical Engineering, Facilities Operations, Information Services, Pharmacy, Respiratory Care, as well as ancillary support teams from Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands, Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus and our Health Centers.

“We had floor plans on the wall that were physically tracking the patients as they moved from West Tower to Legacy Tower,” said Matt Timmons, director of Business Operations and Support Services at West Campus. “We also documented it on a spreadsheet displayed on projectors so anybody in the Go Live Support Center knew exactly where our patients were throughout the entire move process.”

While patients were being moved safely to Legacy Tower, Mission Control ensured a smooth process for the patient move by collaborating with teams from the The Woodlands Campus and West Campus to manage the inflow of patients across the system while the move process was underway.

Seven hours after the patient move process began, staff cheered and clapped their hands as the last patient was moved to Legacy Tower.

“We call today the Super Bowl of patient moves,” said Texas Children’s Vice President of Nursing Gail Parazynski. “We observed the tireless leadership, unity, and undying compassion our team has exhibited all week during the first phase of the Legacy Tower Go-Live. The success of this go-live is a true testament to the leadership and dedicated teamwork at Texas Children’s Hospital.”

One day after this historic move, the first surgery was successfully performed in the new state-of-the-art operating room in Legacy Tower.

View the photo gallery of the patient move to Legacy Tower below. Click here to read the story of the first surgery in Legacy Tower and watch video of the state-of-the-art features of our new OR in Legacy Tower.

The second phase of Legacy Tower will open in September and house Texas Children’s Heart Center®, ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for cardiology and heart surgery.

May 15, 2018

On May 10, Texas Children’s celebrated the soft opening of Texas Children’s Legacy Tower with a special ribbon cutting ceremony and blessing of the new 400-foot-tall building, part of which will officially open on Tuesday, May 22.

In the heart of the Texas Medical Center, more than 200 guests gathered outside Legacy Tower to attend this historic celebration. Guests included members of Texas Children’s Board of Trustees and Executive Council, Services in Chief, In-Chiefs, Chiefs of Service, donors, patient families, as well as Legacy Tower leadership team members and construction partners who together helped bring this massive project to fruition.

Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark Wallace delivered opening remarks and thanked everyone in attendance for their commitment to turning this vision into reality.

“The opening of Legacy Tower is another dream come true for Texas Children’s,” Wallace said. “There are so many people who worked tirelessly to bring us to this day. With 640,000 square feet of space, Legacy Tower will help us continue to serve our patients and their families, particularly children who are critically ill and have complex needs.”

When Phase One of Legacy Tower opens on May 22, the tower will house new state-of-the-art operating rooms with one intraoperative MRI, as well as a new pediatric intensive care unit (ICU), which will span four floors and open with six ORs and 84 ICU beds, including dedicated surgical, neuro and transitional ICU beds.

The second phase of the Legacy Tower will open in September. The tower will be the new home of Texas Children’s Heart Center® – ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in cardiology and heart surgery. The Heart Center will have an outpatient clinic, four catheterization labs with one intraprocedural MRI, cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU), four CVORs and cardiology acute care beds. The tower will also have a helistop, allowing for greater access to Texas Children’s most critically ill patients.

During the ribbon cutting event, Texas Children’s Physician-in-Chief Dr. Mark W. Kline and Texas Children’s Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Larry Hollier delivered their messages of appreciation, and explained what Legacy Tower will mean to our patients and their families.

“As the largest and busiest department of surgery in the country, we are called upon every day to provide some of the most complex surgeries on some of the most sickest children that this world has ever seen,” Hollier said. “The calls come in every day. Legacy Tower is the answer to those calls. I want to thank Mr. Wallace and the Board for the vision that it took to build the tower that rises above us today. It is a testimony to the commitment that they and others have made to show the rest of the world what excellence in pediatric care looks like.”

Kline also thanked the crowd for their commitment to this project, and specifically thanked Texas Children’s Chief of Critical Care Services Dr. Lara Shekerdemian and Chief of Cardiology Dr. Daniel Penny for their instrumental leadership in making Legacy Tower possible. He also shared the thoughtful design that went into building the Legacy Tower to ensure we created the best and safest environment of care for our patients.

“It’s remarkable to walk through the intensive care units and to see the way the equipment has been located, the size of the rooms, the layout, the flow that will occur in patient care in those rooms,” Kline said. “Every detail has been addressed in the most thoughtful manner and in the input from the families has been really extraordinary and absolutely critical to that process.”

After Texas Children’s Chaplain James Denham delivered the blessing, the yellow ribbon was cut to symbolize the completion and imminent opening of the first phase of Legacy Tower. Guests also got a chance to meet Bailey, Texas Children’s new Legacy Tower therapy dog, and take a tour of Legacy Tower.

Texas Children’s Office of Philanthropy organized this event.

May 8, 2018

On Tuesday, May 22, Legacy Tower at Texas Children’s Hospital officially will open its doors to care for our most critically ill patients and their families. But before that day arrives, a lot of preparation and training is underway to get ready for opening day which is less than two weeks away.

Last month, multidisciplinary teams successfully completed a series of simulated patient care scenarios inside the Legacy Tower’s state-of-the-art pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), Progressive Care Unit (PCU) and OR/MRI suite to test the workflow processes in the new patient care spaces and address any potential safety concerns before the new building opens.

“For the PICU, we really focused on creating a virtual unit,” said Dr. Cara Doughty, medical director at Texas Children’s Simulation Center. “We wanted the team to participate in all of the routine work flows as well as participate in crisis scenarios and patient decompensations and codes that might happen in a PICU setting.”

In addition to clinical staff, patient families from Texas Children’s Family Advisory Committee participated in the PICU simulations and provided their perspective on how much this space is going to change the way that care is provided to children and families at Legacy Tower.

A few weeks after the PICU and PCU simulations, patient care scenarios were conducted in the operating room and MRI suite of Legacy Tower to address any potential latent safety threats and concerns before the new tower opens its doors to patients and their families.

“Our focus is not as much on design now, it’s really around those processes,” said Maria Happe, clinical senior project manager of Texas Children’s PICU Services. “We want to ensure our processes are correct, and that we ensure our training matches what we want to do and how we want to operate in this new space.”

Once the first phase of Legacy Tower opens on May 22, the tower will house new operating rooms with one intraoperative MRI, as well as a new PICU which will span four floors and open with six ORs and 84 ICU beds, including dedicated surgical, neuro and transitional ICU beds.

When phase two of the Legacy Tower opens in fall 2018, the tower will be the new home of Texas Children’s Heart Center® – ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in cardiology and heart surgery. The Heart Center will have an outpatient clinic, four catheterization labs with one intraprocedural MRI, cardiovascular intensive care unit, four cardiovascular ORs and cardiology acute care beds. The tower also will have a helistop, allowing for even greater access to Texas Children’s most critically ill patients.

The Legacy Tower project would not have been possible without tremendous collaboration from teams and departments across the organization. Click here to view the Legacy Tower Activation Teams and Departments that played an integral role in the design, construction and activation of Legacy Tower.

Employees and staff can see more of Legacy Tower on Connect throughout the month. Texas Children’s Corporate Communications Team will feature a series of stories and videos on Connect promoting Legacy Tower and sharing how we are preparing for this historic move.

May 1, 2018

The final countdown to the Phase One opening of Texas Children’s Legacy Tower has begun. In less than three weeks, Legacy Tower at Texas Children’s Medical Center campus will officially open its doors to care for our most critically ill patients and their families.

But before the new tower opens on Tuesday, May 22, Texas Children’s will host an Open House on Thursday, May 10, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. to give our employees and staff a chance to see parts of the tower for themselves. Self-guided tours will be hosted on floors 8 and 12 of Legacy Tower.

Employees and staff can see more of Legacy Tower on Connect throughout the month. Texas Children’s Corporate Communications Team will feature a series of stories and videos on Connect promoting Legacy Tower and sharing how we are preparing for this historic move.

February 13, 2018

The countdown has begun! February 11, marked 100 days until the first phase of Legacy Tower officially opens at Texas Children’s Hospital Texas Medical Center campus.

Through this 408-foot vertical expansion, Texas Children’s is adding 657,000 square feet. When Legacy Tower opens its doors to patients and families on Tuesday, May 22, the tower will house new operating rooms with one intraoperative MRI, as well as a new pediatric intensive care unit (ICU), which will span four floors and open with six ORs and 84 ICU beds, including dedicated surgical, neuro and transitional ICU beds.

When the second phase of the Legacy Tower opens in fall 2018, the tower will be the new home of Texas Children’s Heart Center® – ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in cardiology and heart surgery. The Heart Center will have an outpatient clinic, four catheterization labs with one intraprocedural MRI, cardiovascular intensive care unit, four cardiovascular operating rooms and cardiology acute care beds. The tower will also have a helistop, allowing for even greater access to Texas Children’s most critically ill patients.

Texas Children’s Legacy Tower team and its external partners have made significant progress to date, including some of our most recent construction, staffing and activation milestones listed below:

  • Completion of mid-construction simulation-based clinical systems test for the OR/MRI. Detailed simulation and training planning to support the opening of Phase One.
  • Garage 21 enhancements and reconfiguration to serve both the Pavilion for Women and Legacy Tower to improve traffic flow and wayfinding, increase public parking capacity and create clear access to the Pavilion and Legacy Tower elevators.
  • Recruitment efforts have been progressing well. Nearly half of the 871 positions for Legacy Tower have been filled. The remaining positions are being actively recruited.
  • Furniture as well as medical and technology equipment deployment is underway in Legacy Tower.

Texas Children’s also launched a new Legacy Tower website (www.legacytower.org) that features a countdown clock to opening day. The newly designed site provides highlights of all of the services housed in the new tower including a timeline of the phase one and phase two openings of Legacy Tower.

Other exciting milestones on the horizon include the delivery of our intraoperative MRI for Legacy Tower on February 18 and the anticipated arrival of our new Legacy Tower therapy dog, thanks to a generous gift from Texas Children’s CEO Mark Wallace and his wife Shannon in memory of their beloved dog, Cadence.

December 5, 2017

While construction progress continues to be made on the vertical expansion of Texas Children’s Legacy Tower, several changes will take effect starting on Monday, December 11.

With the re-opening of the Level 1 shuttle entrance, escalators and Level 3 South Elevator Lobby at the Pavilion for Women, employees will be able to resume direct shuttle service from Garage 19 to the Pavilion for Women.

Since July 6, the Pavilion for Women Direct Stop had been re-routed to a temporary shuttle stop on Fannin Street to accommodate construction work on the Legacy Tower and minimize the impact on employees who rely on these services to get to and from the Medical Center Campus. This temporary stop on Fannin Street will be discontinued beginning on December 11. Signage alerting employees and staff of this change will be placed at Garage 19, Meyer Building, Feigin Tower, and the Pavilion for Women shuttle stops.

To learn more about shuttle services and pick up locations, click here. To track the shuttles location in real time, this information can be accessed on your desk top here and on your smartphone here.

Additional renovations underway on Legacy Tower

Since July 6, elevator access to Level 3 of Legacy Tower was shut down so crews could create new lobbies. Now, with the re-opening of Level 3 on December 11, planning and coordination have already begun for renovation of Level 5 elevator lobby and Radiology waiting room, work that scheduled to begin Tuesday, December 12 and last through March 2018.

In addition, improvements to Garage 21 parking levels will begin on December 11 starting with the level B4 south end under Legacy Tower. Work in the garage will occur one-half floor at a time and be complete by May 2018. As a reminder, South elevator access to Level 1 will remain closed through March 2018.

Stay tuned to Connect for future updates regarding the impact of construction on the Legacy Tower.