November 19, 2018

Over 300 miles away from Texas Children’s Hospital is the Vannie Cook Children’s Clinic. Located in McAllen, Texas, the facility is an extension of Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers, dedicated solely to pediatric cancer and blood disorders in the Rio Grande Valley.

The clinic opened in 2001, as a joint venture between a local foundation, the Vannie E. Cook Jr. Cancer Foundation, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. Since then, more than 9,500 families have found the care they need right where they need it most – in their own backyard.

“Before we arrived, most of the local children with cancer and blood disorders had to travel several hours to and from San Antonio or Houston for treatment,” said the clinic’s medical director Dr. Juan Carlos Bernini. “This region didn’t have any pediatric cancer facilities, and there were no pediatric oncologists or hematologists regularly practicing close by.”

During the first year of operation, clinic staff expected to see about 100 patients. Instead, they saw more than 400. “It was obvious how critical our presence was, but the community thankfully trusted and bolstered our ability to serve them,” said Bernini.

Comprehensive care

Texas Children’s/Baylor College of Medicine physicians staff the clinic in the only comprehensive pediatric cancer and hematology center in South Texas.

“The clinic has grown from a small group of providers into a top-notch team of physicians, nurses, social workers, clinic technicians and administrative supporters, all committed to delivering the newest and most advanced therapies to our young patients,” Bernini said. “Our commitment to the patient and family starts at diagnosis and continues throughout treatment and beyond. Most importantly, we’re able to forge exciting paths for long-term survivorship with our patients every day.”

The outpatient clinic is comprised of over 10,000 square feet of space with two waiting rooms, seven exam rooms, two procedure rooms, two phlebotomy stations, two laboratories and a large infusion suite divided into areas for toddlers, young children and adolescents, respectively.

In addition to offering diagnostic and cancer treatment services, the clinic offers a long term survivor program which follows childhood cancer survivors through adulthood, and a research program that offers participation in epidemiology studies and clinical trials.

As a member of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), we are able to provide local children with critical access to clinical trials. This is particularly important since a large portion of the population that we treat is Hispanic, a population that is generally under-represented in clinical trials.

Still growing

Leaders with the Vannie Cook Children’s Clinic and its partners are always evaluating the services provided at the clinic and are constantly striving to deliver the best care possible to the children served in the Rio Grande Valley.

Dr. David Poplack, associate director of the Cancer and Hematology Centers and director of Global HOPE, helped pave the way for the partnership between Texas Children’s and the Vannie Cook Foundation. He has always said that supporting the clinic was and continues to be the right thing to do.

“At Texas Children’s we believe our responsibility to care for children doesn’t begin and end with those who are able to come to us for help,” Poplack said. “We have an obligation to identify and address critical gaps in coverage whether they are near or far.”

November 13, 2018

From our three hospital campuses to our health centers, urgent care and pediatric practices, Texas Children’s continues to make great strides in improving access to our patients and their families.

As part of Patient Access 2.0, Texas Children’s launched online scheduling in both English and Spanish on November 12 that allows current patients, new patients and referred patients to schedule appointments via DocASAP, Texas Children’s online scheduling partner. Texas Children’s is the only hospital of the top five on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll to offer online scheduling to patients.

“Since most families prefer online scheduling, it is important for us to pay attention to their needs and do more to help them out,” said Texas Children’s Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Larry Hollier and co-chair of the Access Executive Steering Committee. “Because we really care about our families, we have to keep the doors open to our patients to ensure they get the right care, at the right time and at the right place.”

Led by Project Manager Sarah Ringold, Co-chairs Ryan Breaux, Diesa Samp, Jodi Harris and Executive Sponsor Michele Birsinger, online scheduling will be implemented in waves:

  • Wave 1 (November 2018): Allergy/Immunology, Cardiology, Gastroenterology, Endocrine, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Plastic Surgery, Pulmonology and Urology
  • Wave 2 (January 2019): Adolescent Sports Medicine, Centers for Women and Children Women’s Services, Genetics, Infectious diseases, Nephrology, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Pediatric Surgery, Retrovirology, Rheumatology and Orthopedics
  • Wave 3 (March 2019): Centers for Women and Children Pediatrics, Gynecologic Oncology, Physical Medicine and Rehab, Psychiatry, Psychology, Reproductive Endo/Infertility, Urologic Gynecology and Women’s Psychiatry

Texas Children’s patients can access the online scheduling button on Texas Children’s homepage. Once the button is clicked from the homepage, patients land on the new texaschildrens.org/appointment page and can view all scheduling options available: online scheduling, MyChart or calling the Customer Contact Care Center. Patients can also access online scheduling directly from provider profiles and department pages. From there, a scheduling widget will appear where patients and their families can schedule appointments online with a provider.

“Our patient families expect to be able to do so much online today, and it only makes sense that we offer them this capability as well,” said Ringold, who is also a practice administrator in Urology. “This new scheduling tool will also be beneficial to our providers as online scheduling typically results in better template utilization and reduced no show and cancellation rates.”

This project would not have been possible without the collaboration from multiple departments including Information Services, Marketing, Patient Experience, Central Scheduling, Revenue Cycle and HIM. Practice administrators, ambulatory directors and community leaders also devoted time, energy and expertise in this project.

“We have accomplished so much in a relatively short period of time through these collaborative efforts,” said Senior Vice President and Patient Access Leader Richelle Fleischer. “It has been exciting to see this project go from an initial request for proposal to actual implementation. It truly was a team effort.”

In addition to the online scheduling option via DocASAP, patients who sign up for MyChart can schedule their appointments through the MyChart online patient portal. Since implementing direct scheduling via MyChart in March of this year, over 2,000 appointments have been made across the hospital system.

Click here to access the FAQ for online scheduling via DocASAP.

Patient Access Initiative

Since the March 2018 launch of the Patient Access initiative, Texas Children’s has implemented several solutions to improve patient access across the organization. Click here to watch this video.

Below is an archive of recent Connect stories highlighting our patient access initiatives:

Texas Children’s implements first wave of solutions to enhance patient access
MyChart Madness: Scoring points for patient access system wide
MyChart Madness results in, enhancements continue to improve patient access
Patient access initiative continues to generate positive results for patient families
MyChart Shoot for the Stars Challenge: Scoring points for patient access

Early on the morning of November 7, an excited group including Texas Children’s Hospital clinical leadership, executives and members of the Kangaroo Crew and Mission Control teams gathered on the roof of Lester and Sue Smith Legacy Tower for a special ribbon cutting ceremony marking the opening of our new helistop.

Watch the video or view the photo gallery below.

“The Lester and Sue Smith Legacy Tower has always been about improving care for the sickest children we see,” said Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Larry Hollier. “The helistop is important because it improves access for those children. Whether they’re being transported as part of a scene response for an auto accident or transferred from another hospital, we can now get children and women here in very rapid fashion within a 150-mile radius.”

The helistop is the final element of Smith Legacy Tower to go live and represents the culmination of a major expansion at our Texas Medical Center campus. Months of planning and multidisciplinary cooperation between medical staff, Transport Services and engineering and facilities teams went into preparations for the helistop opening.

“A tremendous amount of work has gone into making sure that the helistop is very safe – safe for the helicopters coming in, safe for those crew that are delivering the patients to us, and safe for our own staff,” said Executive Vice President Mark Mullarkey. “Bert Gumeringer, Gail Parazynski and Deb D’Ambrosio and their teams have been instrumental both in making sure we’re prepared to open the helistop and really in bringing Smith Legacy Tower to full completion.”

Extensive simulation exercises were also held to prepare care and transport teams for potential eventualities they may face, as well as to analyze and improve processes. This included helicopter landings, transferring patients from the helicopter crew to Texas Children’s transport teams, and moving patients from the helistop at Smith Legacy Tower to Trauma and the Emergency Center.

“The helicopter simulation was fantastic,” said Dr. Jeanine Graf, chief medical officer at West Campus and pediatric medical director of the Kangaroo Crew. “We brought together members from our trauma, surgery, ICU and NICU teams, as well as our experts in maternal-fetal medicine, for training and simulations, which were coordinated by our Texas Children’s Simulations Center. Dr. Cara Doughty really did an excellent job demonstrating how more than a hundred folks would be involved in the communication and execution of a helicopter landing at Texas Children’s.”

The helistop at Smith Legacy Tower is the third helistop in the Texas Children’s system, with others in operation at West Campus and Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands. The addition of the new helistop will facilitate the rapid transport of patients across all populations, including neonatal and maternal patients. Before the helistop opening, Texas Children’s received roughly 150 helicopter transports a year, which landed at nearby partner institutions. Now with our own helistop, we’ll be able to offer our care to even more patients who need us.

“The helistop really changes things for us,” said Deb D’Ambrosio, RN, director of Transport Services and Mission Control. “We’re certainly expecting high volume, but with the processes we’ve developed with our helicopter vendors and the high level of coordination between Transport Services and Mission Control, this is going to be so much better for our patients.”

On November 8, Texas Children’s friends and supporters attended The Forum Luncheon highlighting the amazing work of Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Held at The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston, the program shined a bright light on the many successes the Pavilion for Women has had since opening its doors in 2012.

In just six short years, more than 37,000 babies have been delivered at the hospital, including 1,200 sets of multiples, one of which was a set of sextuplets. Almost 8,000 babies have been treated in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and many lives have been saved or greatly altered by the talented clinical staff that works tirelessly to improve the lives of women and children.

“I can’t imagine Texas Children’s without the Pavilion for Women and am thrilled we had the vision, aspiration and courage to build it,” said President and CEO Mark Wallace during his opening remarks at the forum. “In just five years, we translated our vision for this new paradigm of care into a reality that has helped countless mothers and their children.”

Hired to lead Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women shortly after it opened, Dr. Michael Belfort, fetal surgeon and Ob-Gyn-in-chief, headlined the forum’s program taking the almost 400 people in the audience on a journey through the organization’s wide variety of services offered to women and children.

Some of those services areas include:

  • Pediatric and adolescent gynecology
  • Fertility
  • High-risk pregnancy
  • Fetal surgery and prenatal care
  • Global women’s health
  • Menopause and urogynecology
  • Mental health

“I was drawn to Texas Children’s from the very beginning because of the vision they had for women and children,” Belfort said. “We have come a long way in a short time, and while I’m proud of our accomplishments, I don’t think we should ever stop trying to be even better.”

The forum’s program ended with an emotional story told by Emma Tramuto, who at 17 weeks pregnant was told her baby, Ella Rose, was diagnosed with gastroschisis, which is failure of the abdomen to close completely, resulting in the baby having her intestines outside of her body.

Emma and her husband James visited many physicians and surgeons, and were told multiple times their only choice was to terminate the pregnancy – that is until they came to Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women where a team of clinicians cared for Emma and Ella Rose, who is now a vibrant 6-year-old little girl.

“Miracles happen every day at Texas Children’s Hospital and perhaps the biggest miracles are the ones for the tiniest patients,” Emma said. “Our daughter is one of these incredible miracles. Had it not been for Texas Children’s Hospital Ella Rose would not be here today. The doctors and nurses who cared for Ella gave her a chance at life she would not have had one otherwise.”

November 12, 2018

Eighteen-year-old Angeles Vasquez was anxious and scared. For months, a painful wound had lingered on her right ankle. No matter what remedy she and her family tried, it just wouldn’t heal. Unable to find answers or relief elsewhere, they turned to Texas Children’s Hospital and our new pediatric Wound Care Clinic, a new initiative spearheaded by Chief of Plastic Surgery Dr. Edward Buchanan and Director of Surgical Advanced Practice Providers Ryan Krasnosky.

“Dr. Buchanan and Ryan were awesome,” Vasquez said “They gave me the medications I needed and taught me how to properly clean and care for the wound. It’s finally healing and they’re still checking in with me all the time to make sure I’m okay.”

The new Texas Children’s Wound Care Clinic – one of only a few in the country, and the first and only one of its kind in Texas – is a comprehensive center where patients can have a variety of wounds evaluated and treated by an experienced, multidisciplinary team of dedicated medical, surgical, nursing and advanced practice providers.

The team uses evidence-based, standardized treatment protocols – which are under constant scientific scrutiny – to develop individualized treatment plans for each patient. These care plans take into account factors such as wound origin and location, as well as patient and family lifestyle, to determine the best approach to maintenance and to prevent future wounds. Additionally, data from each case is carefully analyzed with the dual goals of improving clinical processes and ensuring care protocols provide the best possible outcomes.

“There is a huge need for this kind of care in Houston and across the United States,” said Buchanan. “We want to lead the way in pediatric wound care on the national level, developing scientifically supported protocols that become the standard of pediatric wound care. With our clinical volume and our dedication to treating these patients, we’re strategically positioned to accomplish this goal.”

Experts in the Wound Care Clinic currently see patients from across the Texas Children’s system at our Texas Medical Center campus, providing high-quality care for a wide range of conditions, including:

  • Animal bites
  • Chronic wounds
  • Deep pressure wounds and ulcers
  • Fragile skin and other skin issues
  • Gastrostomy or other tube issues
  • Soft tissue infections
  • Thermal skin injuries (that do not meet criteria for burn transfer)
  • Trauma
  • Wounds in babies with congenital anomalies

“These wounds are often complex and can take quite some time to heal,” said Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Larry Hollier. “It’s wonderful for a patient to be able to see a team that has all the expertise and products available to heal these wounds in a timely fashion. Additionally, we have the ability to perform minor procedures to speed along the healing and are also able to directly schedule surgeries from the clinic if necessary.”

Still in its beginning phase, the clinic is currently held one day a week. However, in the months since the clinic’s opening, there has been a rapid increase in patient volume, and preliminary plans are already being made for expansion to West Campus and The Woodlands.

“The growth in volume is a testament to the high-quality care our patients are receiving,” Krasnosky said. “Families have been extremely pleased with the care we’re providing and they’ve voiced their appreciation for having a consistent ‘home’ for wound care.”

As the clinic grows, teams will continue to analyze data and lessons learned in order to further standardize clinical processes and care protocols. Long-term goals include the introduction of same-day surgical interventions, for wounds that require more invasive treatment. There are also plans for the integration of a comprehensive research component, with a basic science emphasis on wound healing and clinical research efforts focused on developing evidence-based wound care guidelines, as well as the creation of novel wound treatments and care assessment tools.

In the meantime, clinic care teams are laser-focused on providing the best possible wound care and improving outcomes for every patient who comes to us.

“The Wound Care Clinic is open to any and all wounds that practitioners need assistance with,” Buchanan said. “We hope to get involved early in the care of pediatric wounds within the Texas Children’s system, so as to decrease the time to healing and improve the quality of life of our patients. As our clinic expands, our capacity will expand, and we will be able to provide services to all patient populations. No wound is too trivial or small for an evaluation.”

November 6, 2018

A team of Texas Children’s surgeons, anesthesiologists and perioperative staff recently traveled to Malawi and Uganda to provide surgical care for children with cancer and congenital anomalies as part of Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers’ Global HOPE program. This was one of the first coordinated trips under the new Division of Global Surgery.

Dr. Jed Nuchtern, chief of Global Surgery, Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, pediatric surgeon and Trauma medical director, Dr. Titi Aina, pediatric anesthesiologist, and operating room nurse Anita Hadley worked alongside local surgical teams to provide much-needed surgical care for area children, many of whom had been waiting months for experienced doctors and nurses who could treat their conditions. The team helped complete more than 30 operations, including 10 nephrectomies for Wilm’s tumor, the most common form of pediatric kidney cancer, effectively providing a cure for these children.

“I am so proud to be able to share the talents of our surgical teams by going abroad,” said Nuchtern. “Not only are we able to treat these children who are in great need of surgery, but we are also able to educate the doctors and surgical teams from these countries. The collaborative efforts of Surgery, Anesthesia and the Cancer Center continue, as future trips have already been planned, and we will add to our traveling surgical teams as the Division of Global Surgery grows.”

The Division of Global Surgery, created this past August, expands Texas Children’s ability to help children and women across the globe in low-resource countries and offers pediatric surgery education by providing hands-on instruction and necessary supplies. To build capacity, preliminary Global Surgery efforts are focused on surgical care for pediatric cancer patients and leverage resources, infrastructure and successful global medical programs already in place in sub-Saharan. These include Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) Network, Global HOPE and existing efforts by Texas Children’s Department of Ob/Gyn. Long-term goals for the division include a surgical facility for women and children in Lilongwe, Malawi; expansion of care capacity in Central America; and, ultimately, recognition for Texas Children’s as a leader in global surgical outreach.

October 23, 2018

On October 19, Texas Children’s leaders cut the ribbon to our health system’s newest addition – Texas Children’s Specialty Care Austin.

The clinic, at 8611 N. Mopac Expressway, Suite 300, officially opens Thursday, October 25, and will offer services in cardiology, and ophthalmology. Pulmonology services will begin in mid-November and Allergy and Immunology will begin in December. Scheduling for cardiology, ophthalmology, and pulmonary is now open, and schedules for Allergy & Immunology services will open in November.

“Our goal is to supplement the great health care options already available to Austin-area families and improve access to specialty care in a convenient location,” Executive Vice President Michelle Riley-Brown said.

The 26,000 square foot clinic has 30 exam rooms including five eye lanes. This exam area is the comprehensive site where patients have their vision checked and ophthalmic professionals conduct exams and meet with patients. Each specialty has two to four dedicated rooms depending on the number of providers. There is an additional 26,000 square feet of shell space on the second floor available for future expansion.

Outpatient Radiology services are available for internal and external patients. For cardiology, EKGs are available to record heart activity, echocardiogram to capture images of the heart, and a portable device called holter monitors that also measures and records heart activity. There is also a pulmonary diagnostic laboratory available to perform a number of pulmonary tests such as spirometry, bronchodilator response evaluations and oxygen saturation.

“We have recruited the best and brightest,” Physician-in-Chief Dr. Mark W. Kline said. “We did it at West Campus, The Woodlands and we are doing it again here in Austin.”

Staff at the clinic provide specialized clinical and diagnostic care. Several specialties expected to be provided at the clinic in the future are:

  • Allergy & Immunology
  • Dermatology
  • Endocrinology
  • Gastroenterology
  • Neurology
  • Optometry
  • Plastic surgery
  • Urology

“At Texas Children’s, we are extremely proud to be in Austin,” Vice President Ivett Shah said. “Being here is an extension of our mission — so that we can provide the very best care to even more children who need it. We are honored to have everyone respond so positively and we are so grateful to be here, serving you.”

Click here to visit the website for more information, or call 737-220-8200 to schedule an appointment.