Only full-time pediatric emergency service provider in Kansas opens Monday

October 7, 2011 Local News No comments

Only full-time pediatric emergency service provider in Kansas opens Monday

Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics announces that the Urgent Care Center at Children’s Mercy South will become a community-level pediatric emergency department effective at 8 a.m., Monday, October 24, 2011.

The Tom Watson Emergency Department at Children’s Mercy South will be the only full-time pediatric emergency service provider in the state of Kansas and the only pediatric emergency service provider in the southern half of metropolitan Kansas City, with pediatric physicians, nurses, radiologists, lab technicians and other pediatric allied health and support staff available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We are excited and pleased to provide this service, which has been requested by Johnson County physicians and the community for a number of years,” says Marshaun Butler, Administrator at Children’s Mercy South. “Approximately 65 to 70 percent of the patients currently seen at the Children’s Mercy South Urgent Care Center are actually the types of cases typically seen in an emergency room, so establishing a pediatric emergency department will allow us to provide the best, most appropriate care to these patients.”

“As part of our expansion of services to become a pediatric emergency department, Children’s Mercy South will also be offering expanded access to select medical and surgical specialties and will be open to ambulance traffic,” says Milton A. Fowler, Jr., MD, Section Chief and Medical Director at Children’s Mercy South Urgent Care. “This initiative supports Children’s Mercy’s ongoing efforts to meet the growing medical needs of the children and families of the Greater Kansas City community and surrounding areas.”

Children’s Mercy South has worked together with community physicians to provide after-hours or urgent care services since 1993. Since a major expansion in 2004, Children’s Mercy South clinics and urgent care volume has remained near full capacity. In fiscal year 2005 the Children’s Mercy South Urgent Care Center handled about 33,000 patient visits. In fiscal year 2010, the center handled more than 55,000 patient visits.

The new emergency department will be named the Tom Watson Emergency Department at Children’s Mercy South in recognition of the local professional golfer’s decades of support for Children’s Mercy. Golf champion Tom Watson spent 25 years hosting the Children’s Mercy Hospital Golf Classic and raising more than $11 million for the hospital.

The Tom Watson Emergency Department at Children’s Mercy South is not designated as a trauma center; trauma patients will be transferred to the Level I Pediatric Trauma Center and Emergency Department at Children’s Mercy Hospital on Hospital Hill.