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dialogue
26
NOV / DEC 2014
I
Healthcare Journal of new orleans
push out, so to speak, our subspecialists to
the suburbs so folks don’t necessarily have
to drive here to this location. So a pediatric
orthopedist may have a clinic every Tues-
day morning at the satellite clinic, and all day
on Wednesday we’ll have an endocrinolo-
gist out there. Likewise in Baton Rouge and
Lafayette, where we also have satellite clin-
ics. However, in addition to that we do have
individual physicians who we send to Slidell
or Lake Charles or Monroe and they do sat-
ellite clinics all over.
A pediatric hospital is different from an
adult hospital in that the geographical foot-
print that we collect patients from is much
larger. It does take between 4.5 and 5 million
in terms of a general population to support
a children’s hospital. And that is about the
population of Louisiana, so our footprint for
patient referrals goes throughout the state.
We push physician clinics out throughout
the state because it’s convenient for families,
because it’s a way of introducing people to the
type of care we provide at Children’s Hospital
that other folks don’t necessarily have. It just
kind of attaches us all over to the patient base.
Depending on the specialty and what’s
going on with the patient it can be difficult
sometimes, particularly if it’s a special needs
patient, for families to travel for four or five
hours just to come to a clinic every other
month or every three months. If our physi-
cian is going to be out there it does make it
so much easier for families.
Editor
So what are you working on that’s new
and exciting?
Mary Perrin
Well we are working on our
master plan for the facility across the street.
Being across the street from that property
all these years and watching it go through
many changes and then after Katrina watch-
ing what happened as the state no longer
used it, we were so excited in February when
we finally acquired it. We have all sorts of
nurses and physicians and therapists and
department managers who are participat-
ing in the plan as to what we build over there.
As a matter of fact I was just working on a
committee developing the invitees and the
communication to say, “We’re going to have
a steering committee and we want you to be
on it.” It’s exciting. I’ve got more people rais-
ing their hand to participate than I thought
I would and so it’s a big deal to us. It really
is. It’s a beautiful piece of property. We are
very happy to be able to be a part of bringing
some of those buildings back to life because
there are some vey historic buildings on that
campus that we recognize as being impor-
tant and we’ll find a way to use some of those.
And then building some new structures that
meet the needs of children in the community
and what we’ve been doing for so long and
waiting for. So that’s a very big project and
we are very, very excited about it.
n