Starting With Curious

Picking a top 10 list is like deciding which of your children is your favorite.  So, at the risk of omitting some very important and meaningful people, events, programs, or accomplishments, here’s my list (in no particular order) of the top 10 happenings at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in 2014.

1. CHW was verified by the American Nursing Credentialing Council as a Magnet hospital for the third straight time, a distinction placing us in the top 1% of hospitals. This is a recognition of many aspects of quality, but especially the level of nursing care.
2. For the first time, CHW was ranked in all ten specialties evaluated by US News and World Report, including a number 5 ranking for our Herma Heart Center. Others include diabetes/endocrine, gastroenterology, neonatology, nephrology, neuroscience, oncology, orthopedics, pulmonology, and urology.
3. Our neonatal ICU was featured in a cover story in Time magazine.
4. A multidisciplinary team from the Fetal Concerns Center completed the first ever in utero repair of a myelomeningocele (aka spina bifida) in Wisconsin, making us one of the few centers in the country performing this sophisticated procedure.
5. There was a groundbreaking for the Sojourner Family Justice Center, a collaborative effort with numerous community partners and the state of Wisconsin. Hailed as a national model, this innovative center will bring together shelter, community, and legal services for women and their children who are victims of domestic violence and child abuse into a single location, improving access for those in need.
6. The first phase of our new NICU opened, providing private rooms and incorporating a variety of new technologies to improve quality of care and family-centeredness.
7. The latest step in our commitment to provide care closer to home was the opening of our Delafield clinic in December, with primary and specialty care services.
8. In July we overhauled our clinic fee structure, which greatly reduced costs to families for outpatient care.
9. A variety of steps to improve access for families. This includes an expansion of our access center which coordinates visits for patients traveling from outside the area for care; the initiation of the Wisconsin International Patient Program, with a focus on patients from the Middle East needing some of our highly specialized services not available elsewhere; the expansion of the Ronald McDonald House, an important partner that provides accommodations for families from out of town; and the reopening of  Watertown Plank Road (a blessing for everyone!).
10. Many of our staff relocated to space at the Summit building in West Allis, consolidating those staff into a single (and quite lovely) location.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2015 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.