January 13, 2025

The team at North Austin Campus welcomed their first New Year’s baby on January 1 at 6:44 p.m. Baby girl, Rayah, weighed 7 lb. 11 oz. and was 20 ¼ inches long.  

While there were complications throughout the birth, dad Ayshad provided an update that everyone is now healthy and recovering. 

“The mom (Sneha) was incredibly strong,” said Staff Nurse Alex Flaherty. “Despite all of the complications, they kept the most positive attitude and were so kind and appreciative to all the staff—doctors, nurses, the NICU team—everyone. This family really stood out, and I know they’re going to be amazing parents.” 

Alex stated she was “lucky enough” to spend her New Year’s Day with the family. After caring for this family all day, she decided to stay well past her shift to help with the C-section and make sure everything went smoothly. This isn’t the first time Alex has worked holidays to care for patients, going above and beyond to help on her off days and even buy holiday-themed hats and swaddles to take extra special pictures for families.

Texas Children’s is lucky to have such a dedicated and thoughtful nurse caring for our patients. Thank you for everything you do, Alex!

In case you missed it, you can watch a replay of the Dec. 19 town hall.

Click here to watch the video. 

January 6, 2025

For 38 years at Texas Children’s, Dr. Albert Hergenroeder has provided subspecialty adolescent medicine care for youth with chronic illness and disabilities. His pioneering efforts in transition medicine were recently recognized at the 25th Chronic Illness and Disability Conference: Transition from Pediatric to Adult-Based Care, where he received an achievement award from President and CEO Dr. Debra F. Sukin and Pediatrician-in-Chief Dr. Lara Shekerdemian.

Hergenroeder is the founder and program director for the annual conference, which is both the longest running and foremost national conference in the field. It’s provided international audiences with evidence-based content that has enabled interdisciplinary attendees to acquire new and relevant knowledge and skills to improve their practice and health outcomes of the youth, young adults with chronic illnesses and their families.

“It’s more than just a conference; it’s a forum for sharing what’s possible where we, youth and young adults, families, scientists, clinicians, administrators, policy experts and trainees, can exchange ideas in an attempt to meet the health care transition (HCT) needs of youth and young adults,” said Hergenroeder. “For 25 years, we’ve been grounded by all those who have told their stories of courage, determination and perseverance, of living out hope beyond fear and doubt into what is possible.” 

He continued, “They have reminded us that behind our models of care, payment and interventions, there are people with disabilities who are determined to live their lives to the fullest. Just like me. Just like you. And they are asking for help, just like we, just as I have had help along the way.”

The conference has shared diverse content focused on practice, policy and research. There have been over 6,400 registrants, including nurses, social workers, physicians, advocates, parents, caregivers, youth and young adults, administrators, financial and policy experts, and interdisciplinary trainees in all of these fields.

Click here to watch a tribute video for the conference and Dr. Hergenroeder. 

About Dr. Albert C. Hergenroeder

  • Dr. Hergenroeder has been Principal Investigator for several transition funded research projects, including a HRSA-funded D70 innovative HCT grant project and a Texas Department of State and Health Services and HRSA-funded grants addressing health care transition.
  • He is currently the Principal Investigator on two funded grants, one is a HRSA-funded grant addressing An Intervention to Promote Autonomy and Competence in Transition Aged Youth and the other is an Episcopal Health Foundation-funded grant to decrease health inequities associated with inadequate insurance and subsequent lack of access to primary and specialty adult-based care for patients with life-threatening disease transitioning from Texas Children’s Hospital to the Harris Health System (HHS) as they age out of pediatric care.
  • He was an inaugural member of the Got Transition National Center Advisory Board since 2011.
  • Dr. Hergenroeder has led the HCT planning efforts at Texas Children’s Hospital since 2004 in collaboration with Dr. Connie Wiemann and the TCH Transition Planning Workgroup, including Blanca Sanchez-Fournier, Jordyn Babla, and Julie Harmon.
  • He developed the EHR-based Transition Planning Tool (TPT) which was adopted as an Epic Clinical Program in 2014 and has been used by 22 clinical services across TCH. In 2015, the TPT was selected as a Best Practice by the national Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP).
  • In 2018, he and Dr. Wiemann co-edited the textbook, “Health Care Transition: Building a Program for Adolescents and Young Adults with Chronic Illness and Disability.”
  • He has 14 peer-reviewed publications on HCT from pediatric to adult-based care and 18 national abstracts in the past five years.
  • He has been a visiting professor/invited speaker to discuss HCT at numerous state and national meetings.

For more information about the Transition Medicine content presented at the recent conference, please visit the Texas Children’s Transition Medicine homepage.

When caring for our patients, every moment is critical. Breaking down communication barriers can improve efficiency and increase collaboration, so valuable time can be spent determining and delivering the best care possible.  

Epic Secure Chat combines speed and safety with HIPPA-compliant texting (unlike cell phone or WhatsApp). It is available system-wide for all patient care staff in ambulatory and inpatient workflows to quickly bring care teams together to coordinate patient care.  

Visit the link to learn more: TCH Epic Clinical Communication 

Dr. Lauren M. Hess, associate chief medical information officer, is leading the effort to help make communication easier for our system. “Getting Epic Secure Chat during the pandemic has been pivotal to safer messaging. Expanding the use of Secure Chat and sign-in functionality will be key to consolidating communication on one device and application for the entire system.” 

Please follow these Epic Secure Chat best practices for alignment and effectiveness: 

  1. Be quick, clear and detailed (Think SBAR) 
  2. Attach the patient chart when messaging the care team 
  3. Check receiver’s availability/status (out of office, do not disturb) before hitting send  
  4. If your message is unread, call or escalate your message to another user instead 
  5. Skip “Thank you” and “OK” texts – please use an emoji instead   

The staff at North Austin Campus have quickly adopted Epic Secure Chat and have already seen the benefits of having the entire team embrace this communication tool. 

Kaitlyn Rodriguez, RN, North Austin PFW: “I love it. We can communicate with our providers to get medications and referrals ready before a patient even leaves the exam room. So, it helps make everything move faster for our patients.”   

Dr. JD Ortiz with Pediatric Hospital Medicine: “I had a family I was treating for a vertebral osteomyelitis but waiting on some biopsy samples to rule out Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis. I was not only able to quickly message the on-call pathologist but also talk to the pathologist in charge of signing the final biopsy report. This allowed me to discharge the patient several days before the report was initially going to be read.”  

Melissa Barber, RN Perioperative nurse manager: “Secure chat has given us the tools to communicate about a patient’s care. From our front desk letting our preoperative team know they have arrived to the preoperative RNs communicating with OR RNs about patients being delayed to the PACU messaging the anesthesia team for sign out. We are able to check-in with the house supervisor on bed availability and movement for patients and add in additional leadership if needed.”