In just five short years, Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus has gone from being a brand new suburban hospital to a staple in the West Houston community. The services patients and their families previously drove to the Medical Center for are now at a convenient and accessible location near their own backyards.
Designed exclusively for children, West Campus boasts a highly trained pediatric team that engaged in more than 300,000 patient encounters last year through services in outpatient care, inpatient care, surgery and the emergency center. The number of patient encounters has tripled since West Campus opened its doors in April 2011 and totals 750,000 for the past five years.
During the first year West Campus was open, almost 2,000 surgical procedures and close to 16,000 radiology procedures were performed. Last year, nearly 6,000 surgical procedures and more than 49,000 radiology procedures were conducted at West Campus. That’s an increase of more than 200 percent.
Daily inpatient census at West Campus has skyrocketed too, going from seven during the hospital’s first year to 32 last year, an increase of almost 360 percent.
“West Campus has had unbelievable growth over the past several years,” said West Campus President Chanda Cashen Chacón. “We will continue to build on those successes, listen to the community and provide the services they need.”
Some major milestones for West Campus include:
- Recognition for the past three years as a Top Children’s Hospital by the Leapfrog Group, an organization that provides the only national, public comparison of hospitals across safety, quality and efficiency dimensions. West Campus is among an elite group of only 12 children’s hospitals and is the only children’s hospital in Houston to be recognized with this prestigious distinction.
- Activation of the system’s first helipad, which has been used frequently and allows for faster transport and subsequently quicker treatment.
- Expansion of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit from eight beds to 16 beds, allowing the unit to see more than 2,000 patients in just five months.
- Construction of a $16 million, 18-bed expansion of the hospital’s acute care capacity. The new unit includes an eight-bed special isolation unit designed for children with highly contagious infectious diseases, such as pandemic influenza, entervirus D68, Ebola and many others. As a result of Texas Children’s preparation in the area of infectious disease, the medical system was designated by the State of Texas as a pediatric Ebola treatment center, which means if and when a pediatric patient with Ebola symptoms arrives in Texas, they will come to West Campus for treatment.
“The Texas designation as the pediatric treatment site for Ebola is an impressive accomplishment for the West Houston market,” Chacón said. “It really allows us to grow our specialization of care in the community.”
To remain one of the most active pediatric hospitals in the Houston community, West Campus is focusing on expanding inpatient capacity, ambulatory capacity and supporting hospital infrastructure. Last year, the Texas Children’s Board of Directors approved a $50 million capital improvement effort that will help expand the hospital’s acute care capacity and is allowing the hospital to move forward with the following projects over the next few years:
- Create dedicated suite for Interventional Radiology services
- Expand perioperative services to include increased pre-operative and post-operative areas as well as operative suites
- Convert offices within existing clinics into additional clinic exam space to increase access to highly sought after subspecialty care in west Houston
- Build office and administrative support space for dedicated physicians and providers
- Expand inpatient acute care capacity by 42 beds to include the 18-bed special isolation unit as well as another 24-bed unit in existing shell space
- Construct additional outpatient subspecialty clinic space to increase access to our growing patient demand
“The expansion we are seeing on our campus is amazing but what really differentiates us is the people who come here every day to serve the patients who seek our care,” Chacón said. “They go above and beyond because they are passionate about making memories for our patients and families.”