May 25, 2016

Watch this video to see the steady progress being made on the construction of Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.

May 10, 2016

This fall, Texas Children’s will open its doors to the outpatient building of Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands. Soon thereafter in the spring of 2017, Texas Children’s second community hospital will be ready to serve The Woodlands and beyond.

“Tellepsen Construction has made tremendous progress,” said Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands President Michelle Riley-Brown. “The interior building is coming along nicely with walls, door frames and above the ceiling utilities are being installed as we speak. The design of the landscape is coming along as well and will include three fountains, a court yard and our trademark colorful yard letters.”

When people finally get to walk through the doors of the hospital, Riley-Brown said they will be greeted by a facility that is inviting, open and designed with a Spirit of the Woods theme to incorporate the lush, woodsy landscape that surrounds it. Just inside the main entrance, for example, is a grand staircase that will simulate a tree house, giving the area a safe, central location for children and families visiting Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.

The decision to build the hospital was made after the success of Texas Children’s first community hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus. The goal of the location north of Houston is to provide dedicated pediatric care to the fast-growing population of The Woodlands, Kingwood, Conroe, Spring, Magnolia, Humble, Huntsville and beyond.

“Having Texas Children’s quality care closer, fewer families will have to drive 35 miles to the Texas Medical Center to receive pediatric health care,” Riley-Brown said. “Hopefully, that will bring peace of mind to many families and parents that we are close by if they need us.”

Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands will build on a decade’s worth of relationships Texas Children’s has built in the community through our primary and sub-specialty care at Texas Children’s Pediatrics locations and the Texas Children’s Health Center The Woodlands. The 560,000-square-foot complex will offer inpatient and outpatient specialty pediatric care, and facilities will include 72 outpatient exam rooms, 25 emergency center exam rooms, 28 critical care rooms, 32 acute care rooms, 12 radiology rooms and four operating rooms.

The hospital’s leadership team is in place with Riley-Brown as president of the hospital, Dan DiPrisco as senior vice president, Dr. Charles Hankins as chief medical officer and Dr. Jeffrey Shilt as chief surgical officer. The hospital’s director team also has been chosen and includes Trent Johnson, Ketrese White, Julie Barrett, and Cathy Pierantozzi. As for providers, 40 percent of the hospital’s physicians have been hired and about 20 percent of its mid-level providers are in place. “Our goal is to attract the best and the brightest,” said Riley-Brown, adding that the hospital will employee about 650 employees when we open the doors. “We hope that people find this as an opportunity and will express interest in joining the Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands team.”

To prepare for the opening of the outpatient building and the hospital, seven activation teams have been formed that comprise 130 people from across the Texas Children’s system, including hospital-based services, clinical support services and patient care services. The goal of the teams is to ensure activation planning, operational alignment, increase visibility to the project and promote committed partnerships. Leaders also will be working with Dr. Jennifer Arnold and the Pediatric Simulation Center to plan for simulation and training prior to both the inpatient and outpatient facilities opening.

“It’s pretty exciting to know that we’re making history at Texas Children’s Hospital with yet another milestone of opening a community setting for the hospital,” Riley-Brown said. “We can’t wait to open the doors!”

See below for the most up-to-date aerials of the hospital. Click here to get a snapshot of what will be offered at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.

April 27, 2016

Check out the latest time lapse video capturing a bird’s eye view of construction on Tower E.

March 8, 2016

Pediatric Tower E simulations

What happens when a multidisciplinary team engages in 32 hours of simulated-based design tests on patient care spaces inside a mocked-up “critical care” warehouse? More than 100 latent safety threats are detected before construction begins.

As part of the Pediatric Tower E vertical expansion project, Texas Children’s Simulation Center and the CareFirst Quality, Service and Safety (QSS) Project Team coordinated a series of high-risk patient care scenarios to drive the design of the space for the patient rooms in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and the progressive care unit (PCU).

“A specific concern in a new healthcare facility or patient care process is the existence of unrecognized or latent threats to safety that could affect actual patients once the facility opens,” said Texas Children’s Simulation Center Medical Director Dr. Jennifer Arnold. “Simulation allows us to test patient care spaces before final design decisions are made to avoid costly mistakes that could potentially impact patient safety, patient/family experience and provider satisfaction. To make modifications after a facility is built can be very expensive or sometimes even impossible.”

Following a needs assessment to identify the high-priority areas for testing of the new space, patient care simulations including the worst case scenario in the intensive care unit were conducted inside a large warehouse mock-up that resembled a critical care environment. A multidisciplinary team of intensivists, nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, respiratory therapists, patient families and other clinical support staff, participated in the four-day simulations and provided their feedback.

“I was involved on the PICU and PCU days and the staff who participated made me so proud,” said Texas Children’s Clinical Care Nursing Director Shannon Holland. “They were engaged and committed to ensuring we create the best possible environments to care for our patients and their families.”

During these simulations, 115 latent safety threats were identified and categorized based on Safe Hospital Design Principles outlined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Recommendations for design were received on the areas below. Clinicians prioritized recommendations and are continuing to work with the design team to incorporate into the final design.

  • Visibility into room
  • Visibility and monitoring between rooms
  • Equipment and technology placement within room
  • Storage solutions within room
  • Family space design

“All patient rooms will be configured to provide dedicated space for our patients, providers and families,” said CareFirst Clinical Senior Project Manager Maria Happe. “Providing a dedicated family space within the intensive care rooms helps to promote and enhance family engagement and patient and family-centered care for our most critically ill patients.”

Family advisors like Ed Wolff and his wife, whose daughter spent five and a half months in the NICU at Texas Children’s in 2004 followed by three and a half months in the CVICU, were key partners in the simulations. They shared valuable perspectives on how to customize the new space to fit the unique needs of patients and families in a critical care environment.

“These new rooms will bring family-centered care to the next level,” Wolff said. “A nurse may be with your child for 12 hours, and they see a lot, but the parents are there 24 hours a day during shift changes. By adding a family space, parents can be at the bedside with their critically ill child and can easily observe the monitors from the family space, which I think in the end, will lead to even better outcomes.”

Dr. Patricia Bastero, a pediatric intensive care physician and associate director of ECMO at Texas Children’s Heart Center, says these collaborations reflect our unwavering commitment to patient care.

“Building a simulated hospital to test all possible scenarios in real life, discard all the bad options and come up with the best solutions exemplifies our passion for what we do,” Bastero said. “This was a team effort on many different levels to ensure a safe environment of care is cultivated for our critically ill patients and their families.”

May 5, 2015

5615carefirstblitz640

What happens when more than 65 people collaborate in one room for intensive, weeklong brainstorming sessions? A plethora of creative solutions to optimize the delivery of care to critically ill patients.

Last month, Texas Children’s Business Process Transformation Department organized Blitz Week to develop an alternative stacking solution and identify design requirements for the 19-floor expansion of Pediatric Tower E next to Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women.

The 25-floor tower, which is slated for completion in 2018, will house a 130-bed intensive care unit, new operating rooms with the latest technology, and the Heart Center, which includes the cardiovascular operating rooms and the cardiovascular intensive care units. The roof of the tower will feature a helipad to transport critically ill patients to Texas Children’s.

To ensure that functionality drives the design of the new pediatric tower, an Interdisciplinary Work Group was formed comprised of key players representing different specialty areas of the hospital including clinical care, pharmacy, radiology, anesthesiology, surgery, family patient services, emergency center, blood bank, supply chain and the Heart Center.

Prior to Blitz Week, the group assembled into specialized teams to map out how they would respond to seven complex patient care scenarios. The teams reconvened during Blitz Week to share their current work flow process using a spaghetti diagram and compared it to the initial stacking diagram to determine what design changes need to be made to enhance operational efficiency and overall patient experience in the new pediatric tower.

“Putting all key players in the same room at the same time was powerful,” said Melanie Lowther, director of Business Process Transformation at Texas Children’s. “After spending more than 35 hours with bedside and support staff, and reviewing more than 150 workflows in one week, we generated creative solutions and requirements to help architects develop a better and more functional schematic design.”

The Super User Committee endorsed these recommendations from Blitz Week:

  • Implement an internal transport team to safely shuttle patients between floors in the pediatric tower
  • Reshuffle the Heart Center for better adjacencies by having cardiovascular operating rooms and cardiovascular intensive care units located on the same floor, and construct a separate MRI in the Heart Center.
  • Separate outpatient and inpatient radiology for all modalities to optimize patient care work flow processes
  • Build call rooms to be co-located with each service area instead of grouped in one location
  • Revise stack diagram to include Critical Care Medicine offices

During the initial design development process, the Interdisciplinary Work Group and Texas Children’s Simulation Center engaged in table-top simulated scenarios to prepare for potential emergency management situations.

Lowther says once the architects create the initial schematic design, the simulation team will develop a cardboard mockup to represent a small size version of different areas of the pediatric tower. The cardboard simulation will allow staff to test out processes, see how departments will be set up and catch potential design issues before the real construction begins.

“Blitz Week was an incredible success and helped us eliminate redundancies in our work flow processes to ensure we deliver the most efficient care to our critical care patients,” said Dr. Stephen Stayer, Texas Children’s associate chief of Anesthesiology. “We want to continue to make Texas Children’s the best possible place to give and receive care and this is one example of how we are fulfilling our CareFirst promise.”

February 24, 2015

22515carefirst550

Many of you read the announcement about our CareFirst plans in November, and just a few weeks ago, you began seeing the CareFirst window clings and banners around the Main Campus. The CareFirst initiative will drive our reinvestment in the programs our most critically ill patients need – primarily in the Critical Care units, operating rooms, Heart Center, Emergency Center and many of our Diagnostic and Therapeutic Services.

We recently spoke with a mother whose child spent three months in our pediatric intensive care unit. The mother, along with President and CEO Mark A. Wallace and some of our leaders who are driving the capital project, explain what CareFirst will really mean to our patients, their families and our staff and employees.

Below are some key facts and figures about the CareFirst project.

19 floor expansion to create Pediatric Tower E, which will include:

  • 129 critical care beds
  • 7 additional high-technology ORs
  • 1 new radiology suite
  • Completed in 2018

West Tower renovation to include:

  • 57-bed emergency center with 12-bed short-stay unit
  • Completed in 2020

640,000 square feet of new space will be added overall.

$575M is the total cost of the project.

July 22, 2014

72314errorprevention640

“Please don’t hurt me. Heal me, and be nice to me.”

In that order, those are our patients’ most basic needs. Preventing errors and not harming patients are the most important responsibilities of every Texas Children’s employee.

Organization-wide Error Prevention Training launched last week to help ensure every one of us is equipped with the information and tools to keep patients safe.

This video explains why preventing errors is so critical and how each of us can make care safer at Texas Children’s.

“We take care of the sickest of the sick at Texas Children’s, and when you’re taking care of that many severely ill children, it’s a real challenge,” said President and CEO Mark A. Wallace. “Everyone recognizes that creating a safe environment – focusing on safety and error omission – is job one. Doing no harm to our patients is first and foremost.”

The Error Prevention work launched as part of the CareFirst initiative, began in January. CareFirst is primarily two things: an intense study of our core clinical areas at the main campus and an aggressive, strategic plan for how we will address our most crucial needs in those areas. The initiative is focused on the main campus Emergency Center, Critical Care units, and the Operating Rooms/PACU, because these areas provide the highly complex services that our most critically ill patients need. While CareFirst centers around expanding to better accommodate the critical needs of these high patient volume areas, its purpose is greater.

“If we don’t have the right environment, the right tools, the right people or the right structure, then it becomes very challenging to deliver the very best possible care – the safest care,” said Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Charles D. Fraser. “Systems under duress – whether it be in the operating room or the emergency room or the intensive care unit – where there’s duress, then people become fatigued or distracted, and that’s an environment that is ripe for an error.”

The staff and employees involved in CareFirst work are vetting options to create the physical space and support needed in the core patient care areas. Combined with the Error Prevention training that kicked off last week, CareFirst ultimately will advance our efforts to ensure an optimal environment to receive and give the safest possible care.

“CareFirst is about making a promise to every child and woman who comes here that we will not harm them and equipping our facilities to ensure we keep that promise,” Wallace said. “It is far more comprehensive and much more important than expanding and building. It’s about doing what’s right for our employees and medical staff, and most importantly, what’s right for our patients, their families and their care. Ultimately, it’s about putting the care and safety of all of our patients and our people first.”

Error prevention training began in Hematology/Oncology in mid-July and will continue throughout other clinical areas over the next several months. In addition, online training will be provided for all non-clinical employees. Ultimately, every staff member and employee within Texas Children’s will receive error prevention training.

“My wish, my hope for every one of the 10,000 employees that will be going through training, that will hear about CareFirst, is that they stop and think about their individual role in supporting and delivering on zero harm,” said Chief Nursing Officer Lori Armstrong. “Everyone plays a role.”