Last Saturday, in a piper’s parade of pediatric promise, a 40-ambulance armada transferred 152 of the youngest and sickest patients in Pittsburgh from their beds in Children’s Hospital, first opened in Oakland in the 1930s, to rooms designed to feel like home in the brand new Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, now open for care some 2 1/2 miles away in Lawrenceville. The team of 275 physicians, nurses, hospital personnel, and emergency medical staff–with city police clearing traffic along the route–completed the transfer in 6 1/2 hours after the first child was ferried away at 6 a.m.
The new $625 million facility, constructed to create as much of a family-focused atmosphere as possible to support a child’s treatment and recovery, completes the largest recent capital construction project in the city, and it also provides Pittsburgh with a facility for the practice of pediatric medicine that positions the region to move into the ranks of the nation’s top-ranked centers for pediatric research alongside Boston, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia.
With 296 beds, 34 more than the Oakland facility, the new Children’s Hospital also offers 79 critical care beds and an emergency and trauma center with 41 beds. And for the kids who receive care there, it offers a colorful spatial design that is cheerful and open to provide an at-home feeling that supports the presence of the family throughout the entire cycle of hospitalization.
“We’ve got windows looking down into the lobbies, in the four-story atrium or main lobby area, or in the long views down hallways,” says Roger A. Oxendale, the hospital’s CEO. “It’s all part of having parents being able to see other parents and staff around. Just to have a sense that you’re not walking this journey alone.”
Source: Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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