May 8, 2018

Texas Children’s employees and Houston-area residents came out in full force to participate in the second annual Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Marathon Foundation Family Fun Run at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.

On May 5, more than 1,500 people of all abilities participated in the non-competitive 1-mile course. Following the race, participants enjoyed the H-E-B sponsored Family Fun Zone, which was packed with snacks, entertainment and 20 plus attractions.

Professional race announcer Mark Purnell kept everyone energized in their role as master of ceremonies cheering on the crowd and announcing any and all special guests, including athletic trainer Katherine Elish and adolescent and sports medicine physician Dr. Jonathan Santana, who led runners and walkers in some warm-up stretches and exercises. Members of the Ukuele Choir played the National Anthem.

“We are so glad everyone came out and participated in the second annual Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Marathon Foundation Family Fun Run at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands,” said Trent Johnson, Texas Children’s Hospital assistant vice president. “It’s important for families to participate to maintain physical fitness, to connect with people in the community and to learn about what we have to offer at Texas Children’s here in The Woodlands.”

Wade Morehead, executive director of the Houston Marathon Foundation, said The Woodlands is a great running community and that he is excited about being able to reach new runners through Texas Children’s and introduce existing ones to the organization.

Lacy Dalcour, public affairs manager with H-E-B, said the Family Fun Run is special to H-E-B because it’s an opportunity to help encourage children about health and wellness.

“We value this message and partnership a great deal,” Dalcour said. “We are happy to be a part of the event in The Woodlands.”

To get a first-hand look at the fun:
View a photo gallery of the event below.
Check out free race photos taken by enmotive. Use this link and search via your name or bib number. You can directly share your images from your computer and/or mobile device. Make sure to use the hashtag #tchfunrun!

When Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands opened its doors a little more than a year ago, leaders were excited about bringing our expertise closer to the homes of the many patients and families who had been making the trek to the Texas Children’s Hospital Medical Center campus for so long. Leaders knew the hospital would fulfill a need in North Houston and beyond, and based on the hospital’s reception during its first year, they were right.

Texas Children’s second stand-alone community hospital exceeded expectations during its first year, admitting more than 2,400 patients and completing 77,000 plus physician visits, more than 42,000 radiologic procedures and close to 31,000 therapy appointments. Surgical Services and the Emergency Center saw some of the highest patient volume completing 6,222 surgeries and special procedures, and 31,852 Emergency Center visits.

“These numbers prove The Woodlands and surrounding communities needed world-class pediatric health care close to home,” said Trent Johnson, Texas Children’s Hospital assistant vice president. “Every time we’ve been in touch with families and patients, they always have positive feedback and say how much having Texas Children’s close to home has changed their lives for the better.”

“Community members and leaders also have been very supportive of the hospital during its first year, offering help whenever and wherever needed, which tells me they are happy we are here,” Johnson said.

Another group that has expressed happiness and support for the new 550,000-square-foot facility is clinicians and staff.

“The team here in The Woodlands is doing a phenomenal job,” said Ketrese White, director of Patient Care Services. “You can still feel their energy and excitement about our new hospital.”

As the demand for care grows in the area, so will Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands, White added. An additional 14 inpatient beds will become available at the beginning of next year, and leadership is continuously strategizing on how and where to expand and move forward.

“We are extremely pleased with how things are going in The Woodlands and are proud to be able to better serve our patients and families in the North Houston area and beyond,” said Michelle Riley-Brown, executive vice president. “We also are looking forward to the future, which we believe is very bright.”

Located off of I-45 in The Woodlands near CHI St. Luke’s and Methodist hospitals, Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands serves children and families in The Woodlands, Kingwood, Conroe, Spring, Magnolia, Humble, Huntsville and beyond, and was built 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.

Designed with a “spirit of the woods” theme to incorporate the lush, woodsy landscape that surrounds it, Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands offers an open and inviting setting for patients, families and staff alike.

Just inside the main entrance is a grand staircase that simulates a tree house, giving the area a safe, central location for children and families visiting Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands. As you travel throughout the campus, there are images of leaves on the ceiling, rivers on the floor and trees and 1,700 pieces of art created by children in The Woodlands community on the walls.

Some features of the facility include:

  • more than 20 areas of specialty care
  • 32 acute care beds
  • four operating rooms
  • 12 radiology rooms with two MRIs
  • Emergency Center with 25 patient rooms
  • helipad
  • more than 1,300 free parking spaces
  • 28 critical care rooms (14 NICU and 14 PICU)
  • neurophysiology sleep lab
  • EEG laboratory
  • state-of-the-art infusion center
  • dining area
  • family library
  • chapel
  • playrooms on every floor
  • state-of-the-art motion analysis lab

The hospital’s unique design recently earned a Houston Business Journal Landmark Award, which recognizes outstanding real estate projects in the Greater Houston area. Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands was recognized in the medical category.

The inpatient facility is connected to the six-floor, 210,000-square-foot Outpatient Building, which opened in October 2016 and houses more than 20 areas of specialized care including Cardiology, Sports Medicine, Neurology and Hematology/Oncology.

The Outpatient Building is a convenient, kid-friendly environment for families seeking the best pediatric care for their children. A state-of-the-art sports physical therapy gym is on the first floor, check-in and check-out stations resembling a child’s club house are at the entrance of each clinic, and spacious exam rooms and provider work stations line many of the building’s halls.

For more information about Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands, click here.

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.

From our three hospital campuses to our health centers, urgent care and pediatric practices, Texas Children’s continues to focus its efforts on enhancing patient access. Since implementing solutions for the first two waves of specialties over the last two months, patient families are noticing a positive difference.

For Christina Williams, being able to schedule her 13-year-old son’s clinical appointment 21 days sooner than the originally scheduled appointment has been nothing but a game changer for her.

“I scheduled my son for an appointment in April to see an allergist at Texas Children’s Health Center in Sugar Land,” Williams said. “When I logged on to MyChart, I received an instant notification about an available opening in the Wallace Tower clinic and I quickly accepted it. This process is quick, easy and convenient, and it’s great knowing that I can be notified on MyChart as soon as an opening becomes available.”

First launched on March 19 with two subspecialties – Allergy and Immunology, and Baylor College of Medicine OB/GYN – MyChart’s electronic waitlist feature automatically offers patients and their families on the waitlist earlier appointments once their MyChart account has been activated.

Since the new feature went live for these two subspecialties in mid-March, there have been multiple offers accepted to help families get earlier clinical appointments. Below are the results as of April 30:

  • Combined acceptance rate of 8.2 percent for Allergy and Immunology, and Baylor OB/GYN with average day improvement of 56 days
  • Acceptance rate of 7.4 percent for Allergy and Immunology with average day improvement of 54 days
  • Acceptance rate of 10.7 percent for Baylor OB/GYN with average day improvement of 64 days.

The remaining Wave 1 specialties along with Wave 2 will go live with this new feature on May 21. These subspecialties are Orthopedics, Rheumatology, Nephrology, Neurology, Adolescent/Sports Medicine, Dermatology, Gastroenterology, Pediatric Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Orthodontics, Plastic Surgery, Urology and Cardiology.

MyChart Instant Activation

While the nation was glued to the NCAA’s March Madness college basketball tournament, Texas Children’s remained focused on scoring patient access points during MyChart Madness.

On March 19, clinic staff at Mark Wallace Tower participated in a collaborative, 5-week MyChart Madness competition to increase MyChart activation rates across the hospital system, resulting in more patients and their families taking advantage of the benefits of this online patient portal.

MyChart Instant Activation essentially pushes a text or email notification to patient families that allows them to sign up for a MyChart account via phone instead of having to use a computer to sign up.

“Out of the 32 participating clinics at Wallace Tower, a total of 1,096 same-day activations were generated as a result of MyChart Madness,” said Rachel Norman Brock, manager of Ambulatory Clinics at Texas Children’s. “The Urology team was the winner of the MyChart Madness competition with 118 same-day activations.”

During the first week of instant activation across the Texas Children’s hospital system, there were 3,492 same-day activations, almost half of which resulted from instant activation. To date, Texas Children’s has a total of 6,974 same-day activations thanks to our collaborative team efforts to enhance patient access.

Other strategies to improve patient access

Championed by administrative and physician leaders from medical, surgical, and women’s service lines, the Improved Capacity & Improved Utilization workgroup has been focused on ensuring that providers have appointments in their schedules for our patients when it is most convenient for them to be seen.

By first evaluating appointment templates and aligning provider schedules to a standard four-hour clinic session definition to ensure patients receive the service and availability they need, the organization was able to add over 36,000 new patient appointments annually into the system through Waves 1, 2 and 3 of the project. The team looks forward to additional slots as Wave 4 goes live on June 1.

“To date, the workgroup has partnered with 28 specialties and over 600+ providers to create increased appointment availability, particularly for new patients that are currently facing long waits to be seen in our clinics,” said Grace Karon, project manager for Ambulatory Services at Texas Children’s. “With these new appointment slots, the team is proud to be helping our patients access the care that they need.”

Texas Children’s Pediatrics Cypresswood recently opened its doors for the first time since torrential rains from Hurricane Harvey flooded the practice’s first floor with six feet of water.

Wearing “Cypresswood Strong” T-shirts and pinned with mums, Cypresswood staff celebrated the reopening as a homecoming. After the storm while the practice located at 8111 Cypresswood Drive in Spring was being rebuilt, staff saw their patients and families at various other Texas Children’s locations throughout the area, including Texas Children’s Urgent Care The Vintage, Texas Children’s Pediatrics FM 2920 and Texas Children’s Pediatrics Rayford.

“We are so happy to be home in our beautiful new office,” said Dr. Carolina Placenia, the lead physician at Cypresswood. “There is no place like home.”

Julie Laake, Cypresswood’s clinical supervisor, agreed and said the past eight months provided an opportunity for everyone in the practice to learn, grow and develop an even greater appreciation for one another and the support they have organization wide.

“I am greatly appreciative of all of our fellow Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Urgent Care offices that welcomed us in and housed our physicians and employees during this time,” Laake said.” This allowed our Cypresswood practice to continue providing care for our patients, which could not have been done without this amazing teamwork.”

Hannah Conley, Cypresswood’s non-clinical supervisor, said everyone at Cypresswood has grown closer because of what happened during Hurricane Harvey.

“I have a new-found respect for all Texas Children’s employees and how wonderful they were during this,” Conley said. “Everyone has really done an amazing job at keeping us all afloat.”

A handful of other Texas Children’s Pediatrics were damaged during the storm but none as badly as Cypresswood, which closed its doors for the longest of any Texas Children’s Pediatrics due to Hurricane Harvey.

“We are extremely thankful no one else received substantial damage, and that we were able to continue caring for our Cypresswood patients and families while the practice was being repaired,” said Kay Tittle, Texas Children’s Pediatrics president. “It is a testament to our dedication to our patients, families, colleagues and Texas Children’s mission as a whole.”

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.

Hand hygiene is key in keeping our kids healthy and on the road to a speedy recovery here at Texas Children’s. That’s why on Saturday, May 5 – World Hand Hygiene Day – leaders are asking providers to take a close look at whether they are cleaning their hands frequently and properly.

“Practicing hand hygiene is a simple yet effective way to prevent infections,” said Director of Quality and Safety Elaine Whaley. “Cleaning your hands can prevent the spread of germs, including those that are resistant to antibiotics and are becoming difficult, if not impossible, to treat.”

On average, health care providers across the nation clean their hands less than half of the times they should, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result, about one in 25 hospital patients, on any given day, has at least one health care-associated infection.

At Texas Children’s, we strive for a hand-hygiene compliance rate of 95 percent or higher. So far this fiscal year, we have an average compliance rate of 88 percent. Compliance is measured by “secret” shoppers to determine how many opportunities to perform hand hygiene are met and how many opportunities are missed.

“Practicing good hand hygiene is the right thing to do for our patients and their families,” said Dr. Judith Campbell with Infectious Disease. “It reduces the transmission of organisms and infections while they are receiving our care.”

Learn more about how and when to properly wash your hands by clicking on the infographic above, and stay tuned for more information about competitions and additional educational opportunities for front line clinical workers for whom this information is so important.