You never want to think about your child being in a life-or-death situation. Unfortunately, accidents happen, and infants are born well before their due dates. You can be assured that your child has the best care possible right in your own backyard. Children’s Hospital of Illinois cares for the sickest children from throughout the state. The Milestone Project on the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center campus will house all of our children’s inpatient services, as well as the St. Jude Midwest Affiliate.
Each year, about 800 babies are admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In the new building, we will be changing the way we help children and their families, especially in our NICU and our pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).
Our current NICU has 47 beds in a “ward-type” setting. In the new building, our NICU will be the size of a football field and will offer private rooms for all 60 of our patient beds. Families will have the privacy they need while visiting their children. There will also be a HEALTHfamily lounge and kitchenette, along with six “ sleeping rooms” in the NICU for parents who can’t leave the hospital to sleep due to the critical condition of their children. The rooms will be assigned each night, with priority given to families with the most critically ill babies.
Each group of eight private rooms will be organized as a “neighborhood.” Each neighborhood will have three to five nurses working, depending on how sick the babies are. These nurses will stay in or near the babies’ rooms for immediate access to meet the babies’ or their families’ needs. The NICU Care Team is already working on the processes to make sure all caregivers know how to work effectively in this new environment.
Children’s Hospital of Illinois is the only Level 1 Trauma Center and Level 3 Pediatric Care Center in the region. The new Emergency Department (ED) will be outfitted with different-sized equipment to accommodate kids of all ages. The new ED will have 55 treatment rooms, two trauma rooms and a separate entrance and waiting room for patients.
The PICU treats critically injured and ill kids ages zero to 18. The new floor will have 32 private rooms. A sleeper sofa will be available in each room to allow a parent to stay overnight. A family lounge, activity room and kitchenette will be available to the families. Our plan is to make the PICU a little more like a home.
Children’s Hospital of Illinois compares the outcomes of the babies cared for in the NICU with almost 700 different NICUs around the world through the Vermont Oxford Network Database. For the period of 2005 to 2007, the Children’s Hospital of Illinois’ NICU had the best outcomes of any of those NICUs.
The new facility, along with our 80+ pediatric specialists, pediatric residency program through the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, Life Flight and specially trained staff prove you don’t have to leave the area to get the best that children’s healthcare has to offer! iBi