United States : Children s hospitals get $1 billion boost.

Byline: manish03

Two major children's-hospital expansions will give Phoenix-area families more choices when it comes to top-notch pediatric care.

Phoenix Children's Hospital and Banner Health Cardon Children's Medical Center combined will spend nearly $1 billion to build new hospital towers with state-of-the-art medical equipment to deliver advanced treatments.

The hospitals say the expansions are sorely needed to keep pace with the metropolitan region's growth. Area hospitals already struggle to provide timely health care to the region's 1 million children during peak flu season as sick kids crowd the Valley's emergency rooms.

Health-care experts say the problem would only worsen without new buildings and more doctors.

Despite a tapering number of births in the Valley over the past two years, the number of children in metropolitan Phoenix is expected to swell to more than 1.5 million by 2030.

"This will allow us to avoid having people back up in emergency rooms," said Todd Werner, chief executive officer of the Cardon Children's Medical Center in Mesa. "We have a good opportunity to put a dent in any deficit that is out there."

Cardon Children's opens its new seven-story hospital tower Monday at the campus at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa. The expanded hospital will include a 26-bed pediatric emergency room and an expanded medical staff that can treat everything from routine flu to childhood cancer.

Phoenix Children's Hospital's expansion, anchored by an 11-story patient tower now rising on its Thomas Road campus, is slated to open in 2012. The hospital has hired dozens of new physicians and pediatric specialists in tandem with the $588 million expansion.

Those expansions add to existing pediatric hospitals such as the Arizona Children's Center at Maricopa Medical Center and a pediatric wing within St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

It is not the splashy new buildings with bright colors that are the most significant addition.

Children's hospitals typically provide a level of pediatric expertise that other regional hospitals and urgent-care centers cannot match. Children's hospitals employ emergency-room doctors who are trained to treat children, as well as specialists who handle more complicated childhood cases, such as pediatric brain surgeries or pediatric epilepsy.

Both Phoenix Children's and Cardon Children's have recruited doctors, specialists, nurses and other medical professionals to staff the expanded centers. These additional physicians are expected to provide the type of expert care that they say is sorely needed.

"It benefits children of Phoenix to have more options available," said Dr. Mary Rimsza, a Scottsdale pediatrician who has studied medical-workforce shortages in the state. "In some areas, there are long waits for specialists. Hopefully, that will cut down on that."

Each hospital touts its own expertise. Cardon has an expanded neonatal-intensive-care unit that treats newborns. St. Joseph's B

Copyright : Euclid Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company