A medical center that will provide long-term care for Tucson children as they transition from the hospital to the home is in the works on the city's east side.
Danville Children's Medical Center should open by winter at El Dorado Health Campus, 1400 N. Wilmot Road, said Chris Hatton, the medical center's chief financial officer. The exact date largely depends on when the center can get the appropriate state licenses, Hatton said.
"We're going to provide an environment where the caregivers for these children can learn within our facility how to care for their children," Hatton said.
The 46-bed, 34,000-square-foot medical center will occupy the third floor of the health campus near East Speedway and North Wilmot Road. It will employ between 50 and 70 staffers, mostly nurses, Hatton said.
The facility will supplement services provided by acute-care hospitals including the Diamond Children's Medical Center at University Medical Center, which began seeing patients in April. Acute-care facilities provide short-term treatment for patients with illnesses, injuries, or as they recover from surgeries.
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Dr. Cleo Hardin, section chief for pediatric hospital medicine at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine, will act as medical director at the new center.
Technology advances have changed the face of pediatric care, Hardin said, adding demand for transitional care for children as they move from a hospital to a home setting.
"More and more children are living longer with illnesses that previously would have ended their lives prematurely," Hardin said. "The need for longer term care is steadily increasing."
Danville Medical Center will also help the children's at-home caregivers - most frequently their parents - learn about what goes into assisting the youngsters when they're released from the hospital.
Children with a chronic illness or a serious injury can need special treatment and medical equipment, and providing such care can present a challenge to parents without medical training, Hatton said.
"We're hoping to provide that opportunity where the nursing staff can interface and train those caregivers how to operate the equipment and how to interact with the children," Hatton said.
Julia Strange, a spokeswoman for Tucson Medical Center, said that such knowledge is critical for parents with children who have medical needs. As part of its pediatric intensive care unit, Tucson Medical Center has provided long-term care for its child patients for years, Strange said.
There is additional need for such care for children in Tucson, Strange said. She couldn't immediately say whether TMC would refer children to the Danville center, but TMC does send patients of all ages to a variety of step-down facilities, she said.
The Danville center is currently undergoing about $186,000 in renovations with work being done by Chestnut Construction. While some modifications to the property were necessary to get ready for the children's center, no major renovations were required, Hatton said.
It will have three separate wards: one for newborns, another for children between one and 12 and a third for patients up to the age of 18. Most patients will stay in the facility about a month, Hatton said.
The medical center will be owned and operated independently of UMC and the UA's Department of Pediatrics. But Hatton said there is a certain level of cooperation - Diamond Children's Medical Center will likely refer children there and the Department of Pediatrics provided a medical director.
Further details about the level of cooperation Danville Medical Center will have with UMC and the UA's College of Medicine are still being worked out, Hatton said.
Patients from Diamond Children's Medical Center are likely to arrive soon after the facility opens, but it won't fill up immediately, he said.
"We're going to do this at a measured pace and make sure everything is in order," Hatton said. "And eventually ramp it up to a full census."
Contact reporter Dale Quinn at dquinn@azstarnet.com or 573-4197.