September 09, 2019
Read the full story below from the Cincinnati Business Courier:
Hundreds of women might have babies delivered at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital every year as a result of an expanded collaboration with TriHealth, which aims to provide prompt care to newborns who have medical issues that require surgery or other specialized care.
Children’s, which in the past has delivered only a few babies each year, has added dedicated rooms for labor, delivery and postpartum recovery in anticipation of increased demand for the hospital’s expertise in the Cincinnati Fetal Center’s special delivery unit.
Advanced imaging enables doctors to identify babies in the womb who would benefit from surgical interventions in utero or shortly after delivery, said Dr. Dan von Allmen, surgeon in chief at Children’s.
The expansion on the main campus in Avondale includes two new operating rooms, which increase access to fetal procedures by surgeons on staff at Children’s.
The design and construction team included ZGF Architects of Portland, GBBN Architects of downtown Cincinnati, Fosdick & Hilmer consulting engineers of downtown and Triversity Construction of Norwood.
While Children’s declined to disclose the cost of the expansion, officials acknowledged it was significant.
TriHealth made no capital investment, but CEO Mark Clement said the Walnut Hills-based hospital system will rotate through a staff of doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists who specialize in obstetrics to deliver the babies.
“It’s a major investment on the part of both organizations in building out the clinical infrastructure to take this collaboration to the next level,” Clement said. “While we have collaborated with Children’s over the years, it really is about bringing the best of two nationally recognized organizations to create a unique, specialized program.”
TriHealth’s Good Samaritan Hospital in nearby University Heights delivers thousands of babies annually, and the system includes doctors who specialize in high-risk pregnancies, Clement noted.
TriHealth is rotating into Children’s about 30 team members, including more than a dozen doctors, said Dr. Kristin Coppage, a perinatologist and site director for Women’s Services at Good Samaritan Hospital.
Some pregnant women already travel to Cincinnati from throughout the Midwest to stay at TriHealth’s high-risk maternity unit for weeks or months, but the expanded collaboration with Children’s will be able to provide the full gamut of interventions that might be necessary to safeguard an unborn baby, Clement said.
The collaboration will enable Children’s and TriHealth to provide comprehensive care around the clock for healthy moms expecting a baby with known medical conditions that require specialized care at the Level 4 neonatal intensive care unit. Good Sam has a Level 3 NICU, which will continue to operate.
Only a few hospitals in the world offer such a high level of specialized care, and Children’s expects to serve local moms and babies as well as some from throughout the nation who will travel to Cincinnati.
Children’s and TriHealth anticipate delivering between 50 and 100 babies the first year of operation and then ramping to 500 deliveries annually.
The program began in July, and about 30 to 40 deliveries have occurred so far, von Allmen said.
“This is for a very specific group of patients who require surgical interventions,” von Allmen said. “This will not replace anybody’s NICU. These are just for a specific and low number of patients who we think their care will be more efficient if delivered at Children’s.”
Currently, many babies who are born with major medical complications are delivered at other hospitals in the region and then urgently transported to the NICU at Cincinnati Children’s. As a result of the expanded collaboration with TriHealth, fewer babies will require such urgent transport because they will be born just down the hall from the NICU.
“We know that babies that have complications do better when born in a facility they are going to stay in,” Coppage said. “That is across all situations, especially in premature infants. Having the patient be born where he or she is to receive care shows better outcomes.”
Because the expansion includes postpartum recovery rooms, such moms will no longer have to stay behind at a birthing hospital as their newborns receive treatment at Children’s.
“The bonding between parents and baby has been interrupted in the past with the baby being sent to another hospital,” Coppage noted.
While UC Health’s University of Cincinnati Medical Center also partners on the Cincinnati Fetal Center established in 2008 and works with fetal surgeons at Cincinnati Children’s, TriHealth has the highest volume of deliveries and maternal-fetal medical providers in the region.
Overall Rating: Comments:
What a fantastic way to use resources. We are so blessed to live near a city that offers such an amazing high risk care. For Trihealth and Childrens to collaborate on such an endeavor is a huge win for our patients. Way to go TriHealth!
Posted by: Melissa Judd on September 11, 2019
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