PEDIATRIC SPECIALISTS TO SERVE SCV.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

The Santa Clarita Valley, home to thousands of young families, will gain the services of several pediatric specialists under a new partnership begun this week between UCLA Children's Hospital and Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital.

The UCLA doctors will be available by appointment several hours per month in an office on the grounds of Newhall Memorial.

Ed McCabe, physician in chief at UCLA Children's Hospital, said the pediatricians' specialities are gastroenterology (digestive disorders), endocrinology (disorders of the pituitary and thyroid, along with diabetes and growth hormone deficiencies), nephrology (kidney diseases), and neurology (seizures, abnormalities of the brain and spinal cord.)

Eventually, McCabe said, the partnership will expand to include a specialist in pediatric oncology and hematology to help children suffering from leukemia and cancer.

UCLA officials surveyed a few hundred doctors across the Santa Clarita Valley, asking which pediatric disciplines were most needed for the partnership with Newhall Memorial.

Grand opening ceremonies for the program took place Thursday. The hospital set aside a suite of three examining rooms, a waiting room, an office and a small lab room for the visiting UCLA doctors to use, McCabe said.

The focus on children's health problems was needed in the Santa Clarita Valley. ``It's a young, rapidly growing community. Parents and physicians and both hospitals all really felt there was a need,'' McCabe said.

The partnership was announced in October. Under the 10-year plan, UCLA has leased space at Newhall Memorial and will send a rotating series of pediatric specialists to care for seriously ill children who now must travel to hospitals in the San Fernando Valley.

The second phase of the plan calls for a neonatal intensive care unit and eventually a pediatric intensive care unit, McCabe said.

Two Valencia women spearheaded the effort. Diana Ventura and next-door neighbor Patricia Wingenroth founded Parents for Pediatrics, a grass-roots organization that lobbied for expanded children's medical services in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Wingenroth once had to take her young son, who suffered from a severe respiratory ailment, to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys for specialized care that wasn't available at Newhall Memorial, the Santa Clarita Valley's only major hospital.

The pair spoke to PTAs valleywide and circulated petitions to rally support. Members of Parents for Pediatrics researched pediatric care, studied growth projections for the Santa Clarita Valley and collected data from San Fernando Valley hospitals that had treated local children taken ill.

Now that the program is in place, authorities will monitor how many patients the pediatric specialists help. Office hours for the nephrologists haven't been finalized, but those doctors will be available a half-day per month, McCabe said.

The other pediatric specialists will be available the following days and times: endocrinology, 1 to 5 p.m. second and fourth Mondays; gastroenterology, 1 to 5 p.m. first and third Mondays; and neurology, 8 a.m. to noon two Tuesdays per month.

Hours, McCabe said, ``will increase in proportion to our business. We need to demonstrate that there's a need. I don't want the physicians sitting there with no patients,'' he said.