December 6, 2016

113016drmingshanxuecure175Mingshan Xue, PhD, assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Gordon and Mary Cain Pediatric Neurology Research Foundation Laboratories/Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, has been awarded the 2016 CURE Epilepsy Felix Henry Memorial Award.

Xue’s research is focused on the development of cortical circuits and how any malfunction of these circuits contributes to epileptic encephalopathies. This award is awarded in the honor of Felix Henry who started having seizures as a 3-month-old infant and tragically succumbed to epilepsy as a 7-month-old baby in March 2016. His parents, Jen Scott and Pierre-Gilles Henry, instituted a $250,000 grant to support transformational scientific research programs.

Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) is a leading non-governmental agency fully committed to leading and supporting research in epilepsy. It was founded by a group of parents in 1998, and since its inception, has raised more than $40 million to support epilepsy research initiatives.

Click here to learn more about Xue’s research program and his motivations for pursuing this area of investigation.

September 20, 2016

Before Dr. Howard Weiner accepted his new position as chief of neurosurgery, he knew that Texas Children’s Hospital was the place he wanted to be.

“When I visited Texas Children’s, I was literally blown away by this place,” said Weiner, who also serves as professor of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine. “Speaking with the people here, hearing about the vision, the leadership, the direction, it was very infectious. This was where I needed to be for the next 15, 20 years of my career to do the things that I wanted to accomplish in pediatric neurosurgery for our patients.”

Prior to joining Texas Children’s neurosurgery team, Weiner received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College. During his residency, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at New York University. Following residency, Weiner was awarded the Van Wagenen Fellowship by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons to study brain development in Paris. He also completed a fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at New York University Langone Medical Center, where his career continued for a total of nearly 27 years altogether.

With nearly three decades of experience in the field, Weiner shares his enthusiasm for the future of Texas Children’s neurosurgery program and the opportunity to work alongside a neurosurgery team that he describes as an “incredible team of innovators.”

“If you take every one on the faculty in neurosurgery here at Texas Children’s, everyone is driving their individual sub-specialty area,” Weiner said. “We are using minimally invasive approaches, like laser ablation, to treat epileptic brain lesions and brain tumors. Our teams are developing new techniques in fetal surgery to treat hydrocephalus and we are leading the way in defining neurosurgical clinical outcomes and best practices that are essential to growing a successful craniofacial surgery program to serve our patients and their families at Texas Children’s for many years to come.”

Weiner’s plan is to continue transforming Texas Children’s into the premier pediatric neurosurgical program in the country by providing innovative, high-quality patient care and focusing on multidisciplinary collaboration and teamwork. While overseeing the growth of Texas Children’s neurosurgery program, he is cultivating a rich environment for faculty members to develop their subspecialty interest and propel their clinical and scientific discoveries to the next level.

“We are well on our way as a division of neurosurgery and as an institution to be the destination for high-quality, world-class innovative and especially attentive care for children,” Weiner said. “That is really my vision for neurosurgery. We will be the leaders in training the next generation of leaders in our field.”

Ranked No. 2 nationally in neurology and neurosurgery by U.S. News & World Report, Texas Children’s neurosurgery program is among the largest and most experienced pediatric neurosurgery units in the U.S., performing more than 950 surgeries annually for a broad range of pediatric neurosurgical disorders.

For more information about Texas Children’s neurosurgery program, click here.

August 16, 2016

81716powersoccer640City youth who use power wheelchairs will participate on the Houston Fireball’s power soccer team in the third soccer match between a Professional League Soccer team and a Power Chair team. Eighty percent of the Houston Fireball team is made up of Texas Children’s patients.

The MLS Houston Dynamo and the NWSL Dash teams face off against Houston’s only power soccer team from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, August 16, at Fonde Recreation Center, 110 Sabine Street in Houston.

The event will be an excellent opportunity to observe young athletes with motor disabilities showcase their talents while watching a leading Houston sports team play soccer in power chairs with the Fireball’s team. Dr. Tim Lotze, director of the Muscular Dystrophy Clinic, along with other Texas Children’s physicians and staff representing three to four service lines will be watching from the stands as they cheer their team on.

Power soccer is the fastest-growing sport developed specifically for power wheelchair users that allow them to unleash their competitive spirit, develop sportsmanship and team-building skills. The World Cup will be played in US 2017.

Click video to see the Fireball/Dynamos in action. Pump Up for the great power soccer clash!

The event includes Mascot Diesel, DeeJay. Senegal, EMCEE Sarah Pepper (95.7), and single item auction where highest bidder plays on the Dynamo team the last 15 minutes in a power soccer chair. Concessions available.

Admission is FREE. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Autographs will be available after the match.

If you are interested in playing power soccer, contact Diane Murrell at ext. 2-1058 or go to the Fireballs web site at www.houstonfireballs.com

July 6, 2016

7616drlotze175Dr. Timothy Lotze recently received the 2016 Program Director Recognition Award from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). The award acknowledges excellence on behalf of neurology program directors whose leadership, creativity and innovation are crucial in ensuring the future of neurology.

“This is a huge accomplishment for a pediatric neurologist as our physicians are competing with adult neurology program directors as well,” said Texas Children’s Chief of Neurology Dr. Gary Clark, who nominated Lotze for this distinguished award.

As director of the Pediatric Neurology Residency Training Program at Baylor College of Medicine since 2005, Lotze’s contributions to resident education include expanding the child neurology residency to five approved slots per year and enhancing trainee exposure to clinical research and subspecialties, such as genetics, to help residents understand the roles of modern genetic testing in the discovery and diagnosis of neurological diseases.

In addition, Lotze has developed educational programs that are very forward thinking. For instance, as child neurology training requires education in adult neurology, Lotze established integrated rotations that combine adult and pediatric neurology training in specific areas. These include clinics in neuromuscular disease, movement disorders and multiple sclerosis. Through this type of training, residents better understand the full spectrum of such conditions through the lifespan to include how children transition from a pediatric to an adult care environment with various chronic conditions.

“When I tapped Dr. Lotze to lead our program, I recognized rare qualities in him that would make him invaluable as a program director,” Clark said. “His innovative approach to resident education, his adoption of technology, and his development of educational assessment tools combined with his warm, supportive personality is why I believe he is the best program director in child neurology in the United States.”

In recognition for his teaching and leadership in academic medicine, Lotze has also received two Fulbright and Jaworski LLP Faculty Excellence Awards from Baylor. His tireless dedication to training the next generation of pediatric neurologists has won the appreciation and support from his former trainees.

“Dr. Lotze’s professionalism, dependence on evidence-based medicine and patient compassion and advocacy strongly influenced me during my training,” Dr. Amber Stocco said. “He taught me how to care for a complex patient with an organized, systematic approach while not losing sight of the family and the child.”

Lotze was one of two recipients of the 2016 Program Director Recognition Award. Congratulations to Lotze for this much deserved award.

June 28, 2016

62916usnews640It’s one of parents’ worst fears – their child has a complex or life-threatening illness. How do they decide where to go for the comprehensive care their child needs?

Over the years, the U.S. News & World Report Best Children’s Hospitals rankings have helped thousands of parents identify top sources of care for children with the most difficult medical problems. And Texas Children’s Hospital has consistently been among them.

On the 2015–16 Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll, which recognizes pediatric centers that are highly ranked in multiple specialties, Texas Children’s, working closely with academic partner Baylor College of Medicine, ranked no. 4 in the nation for the fifth consecutive year. It is the only children’s hospital in Texas on the Honor Roll.

“We’re rightfully proud of the great work that Texas Children’s does day in and day out on behalf of sick children and their families, but we know we have room for improvement,” said Texas Children’s Physician-in-Chief Dr. Mark W. Kline. “To the degree that the U.S. News survey can help us develop a blueprint for being the world’s best and highest quality pediatric health care institution, we are pursuing that.”

In a process that has become increasingly rigorous and data driven, the U.S. News rankings enable hospitals to look in the mirror and scrutinize themselves.

“Do we like the reflection? Are we as good as we think we are?” asked Dr. Angelo P. Giardino, senior vice president and chief quality officer at Texas Children’s. “In many cases, we are, and we’re thrilled because we are a really great children’s hospital. But there are opportunities where we look in the mirror and we say, ‘We could really do that better.’”

Rankings evolve

Beginning in 1990, as part of the Best Hospitals list, the pediatric rankings were 100 percent reputational for more than 15 years, based entirely on a survey of pediatricians and pediatric specialists across the country, asking them to identify the best children’s hospitals.

When U.S. News decided to rank pediatric hospitals separately from adult hospitals, the publication faced a challenging absence of data. While adult hospital rankings were drawn from Medicare data, no comparable source of information about children’s hospitals was available. As a result, U.S. News enlisted RTI International, a nonprofit research and consulting firm that was already the contractor for the Best Hospitals rankings, to develop a methodology for obtaining data directly from the hospitals and to analyze the results.

The first rankings incorporating such data were published in 2007 as General Pediatrics. Texas Children’s Hospital was listed among the top 30 children’s centers.

In 2008, rankings in six specialties, including cancer and neonatal care, were added to the children’s hospital rankings. In 2009, a newly created Honor Roll listed the 10 children’s hospitals out of 160 surveyed that were ranked in all the specialties, which had been increased from six to 10.

The 2015-16 Honor Roll required a hospital to rank in the top 10 percent in three or more specialties. Only 12 pediatric hospitals qualified among 184 surveyed nationwide. Texas Children’s has appeared on every Honor Roll.

In 2015, Texas Children’s ranked no. 2 in three specialties: cardiology/heart surgery, neurology/neurosurgery and pulmonology. Texas Children’s ranked among the top five hospitals in six specialties and in the top 30 hospitals in all 10 specialties.

“The original purpose of the Best Hospitals rankings was to inform patients and families and help them make decisions,” said Health Rankings Editor Avery Comarow, who has directed the Best Hospitals projects since their beginnings. “I now recognize that we don’t necessarily have to just reflect performance. We can also drive it by incorporating metrics that reflect that goal. Every year, our contractor, RTI International, meets with medical experts to evolve the methodology in ways that not only reflect what children’s hospitals are doing, but ways in which they could and should be doing better.”

Quality framework

Today, the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals rankings use a well-accepted framework for evaluating the quality of health care:

Structure: hospital resources related to patient care, such as the ratio of nurses to patients, specialized clinics and programs, and certification by external organizations.

Process: compliance with best practices in diagnosis, treatment, prevention and patient education. As a part of the process, reputation now counts as 16.7 percent of the overall score, down from the original 100 percent.

Outcomes: factors such as rates of survival, infection, mobility and cure.

The increasing emphasis on quality measures had strong support from the late Dr. Bernadine Healy, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, who was health editor of U.S. News before her death in 2011.

“Her expertise and perspective were invaluable,” Comarow said. “She had such a strong sense of the things that were important to patients and families. She brought that same perspective to some of the choices that we made in trying to decide which measures to highlight, what sort of weight to give them, how many hospitals we should assign rankings to, and where we would run out of meaningful data as opposed to numbers that looked OK but were not terribly reliable statistically.”

As U.S. News shifted the emphasis toward quality measures, Texas Children’s shifted coordination of the survey response from its Marketing/PR Department to its Quality and Safety Department.

Team effort

The evolution into quality led us to bring all the chiefs of medical and surgical services to the table,” said Mary Jo Andre, senior vice president and chief nursing officer and former senior vice president of Quality and Safety. “The more that quality and best practices were built into the survey, the more accountability of the survey shifted from an administrative standpoint to the medical staff.”

To help build physician engagement, Giardino and Thomas Luerssen, chief quality officer – surgery, were appointed quality officers for Pediatrics and Surgery, respectively, in 2013. The next year, Giardino was named to his present position as chief quality officer of Texas Children’s, and Eric Williams, succeeded him as quality officer for Pediatrics. They work closely with teams of physician section chiefs, practice administrators and data specialists.

Although only 10 clinical areas are ranked, a total of about 20 different services contribute to the survey, such as Radiology, Emergency Services, Intensive Care, Social Work and Nutrition. For example, nursing certification, attention to safe practices and increasing specialty roles of nurses appear in each section of the survey. Texas Children’s receives points for safety because of the hospital’s Magnet certification by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

“Any outcome is a partnership of nursing and physicians,” Andre said. “The question directly related to nursing is about staffing. Seeing how we compared to the rest of the country has been a good thing for nursing, because it’s driven us to have higher standards as well.”

More than 100 people at Texas Children’s contribute to the survey each year, submitting more than 1,500 survey elements in all. Texas Children’s also is represented in four of the working groups that RTI consults each year in continuing to refine the methodology. Involvement in quality improvement at Texas Children’s is even more far-reaching. More than 400 staff members have been trained in Advanced Quality Improvement.

“Quality improvement, which Texas Children’s is passionate about, extends everywhere,” said Dr. Charles D. Fraser, Jr., chief of Congenital Heart Surgery and surgeon-in-chief at Texas Children’s. “Quality starts immediately when the patient or family arrives here. Everyone is important, whether you’re in housekeeping or food services, the cardiac intensive care unit or are an administrative executive. Everyone is responsible for quality.”

Gap analysis

Texas Children’s analytics team provides data to each section chief with a detailed analysis of the gaps between the section and comparable data from top-ranked peer institutions in the Best Children’s Hospitals rankings. The service chiefs and their clinical and administrative teams review the data closely and objectively, identifying gaps and opportunities to improve quality, access or outcomes.

For example, in Texas Children’s Diabetes and Endocrinology section, gap analysis revealed several opportunities for improvement that are being addressed. To help deal with limited patient access, four new pediatric endocrinologists have been hired. To reduce disease complications, timely alerts now appear on physicians’ computers, reminding them to schedule their patients for tests for thyroid problems, kidney complications and early signs of diabetic retinopathy, which is associated with blindness.

“The U.S. News rankings are a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on potential problem areas and to allow us to make the care that we deliver better, more effective and more patient centered,” said Dr. Jake Kushner, chief of Diabetes and Endocrinology at Texas Children’s.

The rankings not only help identify gaps where improvements are needed, but also provide data to build the case for needed changes.

“Many of the service chiefs and practitioners have said, ‘We’ve been wanting this – this process, this equipment, this type of clinic – for years, and here it is in the survey,’” said Terri Brown, assistant director of Clinical Outcomes and Data. “So they are able to leverage the survey to help achieve what they already know to be good ideas.”

As the Best Children’s Hospitals survey focuses more and more on ways to improve outcomes, the transparency and accountability of the published rankings are helping to improve children’s health care nationally.

“If you look at the hospitals on the Honor Roll, we’re all delivering great care to children and families,” Giardino said. “Everybody’s working hard to get better. So the bar keeps moving higher. And that’s the whole point.”

June 21, 2016

62116USNEWS640The 2016-17 edition of Best Children’s Hospitals by U.S. News & World Report ranked Texas Children’s Hospital fourth in the country out of nearly 200 pediatric institutions. For the eighth straight year, Texas Children’s Hospital was placed on the Best Children’s Hospital Honor Roll, and for the first time Texas Children’s has a no. 1 ranked service – Pulmonology.

Texas Children’s national rankings for each subspecialty area are:

#1     Pulmonology
#2     Cancer

#2     Cardiology and Heart Surgery
#2     Neurology and Neurosurgery
#3     Nephrology (kidney disorders)
#5     Urology
#6     Gastroenterology & GI Surgery
#11   Diabetes and Endocrinology
#14   Neonatology
#21   Orthopedics

Five services are ranked in the top 5 percent, and two services are in the top 10 percent. Also, based on last year’s rankings, eight services made gains or maintained their current top rankings.

“These rankings continue to reflect the steadfast commitment Texas Children’s has to providing the highest-quality patient care and outcomes possible for the families we serve,” said President and CEO Mark A. Wallace. “The diligent efforts and enthusiasm our staff and employees display every day for Texas Children’s mission, along with our outstanding results in this survey, proves we are unquestionably the best in Texas.”

To be considered for the honor roll distinction, a hospital must have high rankings in at least three specialties. Texas Children’s Hospital is 1 of only 11 hospitals on the Honor Roll this year. We are also the only pediatric hospital in Texas – and the Southwest region – to make the Honor Roll all eight times since the specialty-specific rankings began in the 2009 – 2010 survey year.

In addition to ranking children’s hospitals overall, U.S. News & World Report also ranks the top 50 pediatric hospitals in 10 major subspecialty areas.

“From a measurement perspective, our survey results demonstrate how hard we’re working as an organization to deliver high quality care to our patients,” Wallace said. “The more consistently we deliver high quality care and the safer we deliver that care to our patients, the better their outcomes are, and the better our overall numbers are.”

The results also reflect the diligent efforts of a solid structure focused on the U.S. News survey. The process of compiling and refining our data is an ongoing challenge, which will continue to improve under the leadership of Texas Children’s USNWR Operations team, including Dr. Angelo Giardino, Trudy Leidich, Paola Alvarez-Malo, Elizabeth Pham, Roula Smith.

“These rankings continue to reflect what we all already know, that the trajectory of Texas Children’s is absolutely incredible,” Wallace said.

For more information about the U.S. News rankings, visit:

U.S. News & World Report Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll 2016-2017
Rank Hospital
1 Boston Children’s Hospital
2 Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3 Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
4 Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston
5 Seattle Children’s Hospital
6 Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
7** Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
7** Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
9 Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora
10** Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Palo Alto, Calif.
10** Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio

*2 points per specialty for ranking in highest 5 percent of hospitals; 1 point if in next 5 percent.

**Tie.

April 12, 2016

41316MEGScanner640Texas Children’s is the fourth pediatric hospital in Texas to offer magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive brain imaging technology that assists neurosurgeons in developing more precise surgical plans for patients with epilepsy and other seizure disorders, ultimately enhancing their long-term outcomes.

The MEG scanner records very tiny magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain to identify the sources of normal and abnormal brain function with millimeter precision. Unlike X-ray and CT scans, MEG does not emit radiation. Instead, it works like a very sensitive microphone that records magnetic fields emitted by brain cells instead of sound.

“MEG is an invaluable tool in evaluating epilepsy patients for potentially curative brain surgery,” said Texas Children’s neurologist Dr. Michael Quach. “Prior to MEG, the only technology capable of localizing brain activity with such high temporal and spatial resolution was intracranial EEG monitoring, which requires exposing the surface of the brain with surgery in order to implant EEG electrodes. With MEG technology, we can achieve similar localization without the need for open brain surgery.”

When patients come in for a MEG scan, the MEG technician places electrodes onto the patient’s scalp before positioning the patient’s head into the scanner where the machine collects information from 306 sensors simultaneously every millisecond. The MEG images are superimposed on the MRI to correlate where the magnetic activities of brain function occur in relation to the patient’s brain structures.

When MEG and MRI are analyzed together, physicians can identify the sensory regions of the brain – like speech, touch, vision and motor function – and can localize the sources of seizures and other abnormal brain activity. With this combined information, surgical procedures can be planned more precisely to remove abnormal brain tissue while minimizing damage to parts of the brain that function normally.

“One of the great things about MEG is it gives pediatric patients a chance to qualify for epileptic surgery,” said MEG technician Michael LaRose. “With this increased data, our neurologists and neurosurgeons have a better chance of coming up with a surgical plan that may help these children with seizures.”

The MEG procedure usually lasts about an hour and a half but the amount of time it takes to complete the scan varies for each patient. Since the MEG lab opened last November, Texas Children’s has performed 25 MEG procedures.

Since very few hospitals in Houston are equipped with this advanced imaging technology, Texas Children’s also offers this service to Baylor College of Medicine physicians who treat adult patients.