Because:
- Your child is the reason we come to work every day.
- Mutual respect between families and cardiac surgery is a tangible bond at Children's Mercy.
- It is a privilege to care for your child - life is a blessing.
- In 2003, Children's Mercy was named one of the top ten children's hospitals in America by Child magazine.
- Children's Mercy was the first hospital in Missouri or Kansas to receive the prestigious "Magnet" designation, recognizing excellence in our nursing service.
- We have a team of specialists dedicated to the care of your child: cardiologists, pediatric heart surgeons, anesthesiologists, advanced practice nurses, operating room nurses, intensive care nurses.
- The real question is: Why would you go anywhere else?
Additional Information to assist you in your decision:
The Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics is a nearly 300-bed regional pediatric medical center located in Kansas City, Missouri. The hospital provides comprehensive primary, secondary, and tertiary specialty care to children from a 70-county region in Missouri and Kansas plus referrals from adjacent states. It is the only dedicated pediatric medical center serving the greater Kansas City area (population 1.7 million), western Missouri and eastern Kansas and is the primary teaching hospital for the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and health science programs.
Three Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgeons , 6 Cardiovascular Surgery Advanced Practice Nurses and 3 Nurse Clinicians , 2 RNFAs, 5 Perfusionists, 5 Perfusion Assistants and operating nurses staff the Cardiovascular Surgical team. Cardiovascular surgical support staff also currently includes 2 Office Coordinators, 3 Administrative Assistants, and Research & Development personnel. Surgical activity in 2007 included 274 0open heart procedures and 244 closed procedures.
The Cardiovascular Surgical team works out of 4 newly constructed operating rooms that opened in January of 2003. The operating rooms average 650 sq. ft. per room with an additional 700 sq. ft. of work and storage space available to staff. The Cardiovascular Surgical Suites are outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, including, digital video imaging and monitoring systems.
Eleven board-certified pediatric cardiologists , 7 nurse practitioners/clinicians and an exercise physiologist staff the Children’s Cardiac Center at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics. Clinical assessments are performed at the downtown Kansas City facility, four outreach clinics , fourteen local community hospitals and six out-of-town hospitals. Activity in 2002 included 6,994 outpatient clinic visits and 2,234 inpatient visits and consultations.
Five full-time sonographers staff a busy echocardiography laboratory. During 2002, 8,325 transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiographic studies were performed. The cardiac catheterization laboratory at Children’s Mercy Hospital was installed and opened in January 1998 along with a state-of-the-art conference facility and has since served over 2,000 patients. In 2002, 436 patients were treated during 657 procedures, which included the full range of diagnostic, interventional, electrophysiologic and transvenous pacemaker and defibrillator procedures.
The 42-bed neonatal nursery (ICN) receives patients from Level I and Level II delivery services in eastern Kansas and western Missouri and from our affiliated nursery at Truman Medical Center, where there are approximately 2200 babies delivered/year. About 30 percent of the approximately 850 patients admitted each year are referrals from other Level III Intensive Care centers within the metropolitan area. Infants are referred for specialized respiratory, cardiac, or surgical treatments. ECMO, high frequency oscillatory ventilation and many other special supportive therapies are available within the nursery.
All newborn infants with known or suspected congenital heart disease of any type are admitted to the ICN. Primary care is provided by the Neonatology Attending staff with very close interaction with the Pediatric Cardiology staff members. This interaction assures close coordination of plans for the infant. Cardiac catheterization, if indicated, is performed in the nearby cardiac catheterization suite and the infant is returned directly to the ICN. If surgery is indicated, the infant will return from surgery to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) one floor below the ICN. Following acute postoperative management in that location, the infant may return to the ICN for convalescence or be transferred to a standard infant ward in the hospital. Following Cardiovascular Surgical procedures the patients are transferred to the PICU. The 27-bed PICU is staffed with pediatric intensivists 24 hours per day.