Our Children's House at Baylor

In 1990, while seeking medical services for her young disabled son, a mother brought a family-focused, coordinated care concept to Baylor Health Care System. Three years later, Our Children's House at Baylor was founded with a mission to provide coordinated comprehensive services to children with special health care needs.

Our Children's House at Baylor is a licensed pediatric hospital dedicated to giving quality care to children from infancy to age 18 who need medical care and treatment for developmental and birth disorders, traumatic injury and severe illness.

Staff educates parents on the care they will continue at home to help maximize the health of the child. Medical care often is complex and usually requires a team of pediatric specialists, including chospitalists, pediatricians, physiatrists, pulmonologists and other pediatric sub-specialists. Working alongside the medical team are pediatric specialists in child-life, cardiopulmonary, speech-language, occupational and physical therapies plus nurse practitioners, dietitians, nurses, social workers and nurse case managers. Since the founding of the inpatient hospital, Baylor has opened outpatient centers in the communities of Allen, Coppell, Dallas, Frisco, Grapevine, Irving, Rockwall and Waxahachie.

Highlights

New Outpatient Surgery Center
When children need surgery it can often be a scary experience for them, but at the new outpatient surgery center at Our Children's House at Baylor, patients receive kid-friendly, family-oriented care from pediatrics-trained medical staff to help calm their fears. Prior to surgical procedures, child life therapists conduct pre-operative sessions with each patient to explain the procedure in age-appropriate terms so the child feels comfortable and knows what to expect. Parents are encouraged to stay with their children both before and after surgery and discharge instructions are given to caretakers prior to the procedure. Unlike many ambulatory surgery centers, Our Children's House at Baylor has the ability to monitor patients for 23 hours, eliminating the need for them to be transferred to another physician's care for post-operative observation. Some of the most common surgeries performed at the outpatient surgery center include ear, nose and throat procedures, plastic surgery, abdominal procedures, and orthopaedic procedures.

Day Neuro Rehabilitation Program
For children suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI), recovery can be a challenge. The Pediatric Day Neuro Rehabilitation Program at Our Children's House at Baylor offers an intensive, multidisciplinary, hospital-based therapy program to help keep these patients on the path to recovery. Patients in the program receive a variety of therapies based on their individual needs. The four-week therapy regimen, including individual goals and treatment schedule, is based on post-admission assessments and may include physical, occupational and speech language therapy as well as aquatic, neuropsychological and even animal-assisted therapy in addition to dysphagiagrams. Therapies may be provided on an individual basis or in small group settings for up to six hours per day.

Feeding Program
Many children are born with diagnoses in which they may acquire developmental delays in oral motor and sensory processing skills. These children often have difficulty learning how to eat solid foods and must rely on tube-feedings to supply the nourishment they need. Our Children's House at Baylor offers an inpatient program for toddlers and young children with feeding disorders. Speech therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists with the feeding program teach these children how to eat and drink on their own. The goal is not only to wean them off their feeding tubes, but to increase the volume, variety and texture of the foods they will accept. This is accomplished by improving their oral motor and sensory processing skills and by breaking habits that have formed when refusing to eat. Parents are also trained to feed their children using these techniques so that progress made in the hospital can continue at home.

Community Programs

Annually, former patients and their families join clinical staff from Our Children's House at Baylor for a weekend at Camp John Marc. This camp offers children with developmental issues and those with limited cognitive or physical abilities the opportunity to enjoy activities with other children experiencing the same medical issues. Families share information and form bonds with other families facing related long-term medical situations. Last year, Our Children's House at Baylor helped 92 families and 20 staff members attend Camp John Marc. For fiscal year 2007, Baylor Health Care System will report $390 million* in community benefit, which includes providing care for charity patients and patients enrolled in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the unreimbursed costs of medical education, research and community programs.

Outpatient Centers

Our Children's House at Baylor offers outpatient services at eight locations throughout the Metroplex. Each clinic is staffed by pediatrics-trained occupational, physical and speech language therapists, as well as psychologists and neuropsychologists at some sites, who provide outpatient therapy services to treat a variety of conditions. In addition to its ongoing outpatient therapy program, Our Children's House at Baylor in Irving provides childcare services to children with special needs and their siblings with normal development in a child-friendly environment.

• Our Children's House at Baylor-Allen, 8 Prestige Circle, Suite 101, Allen, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Coppell, 773 South MacArthur, Suite 201, Coppell, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Dallas, 3301 Swiss Ave., Dallas, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Frisco, 7010 Preston Rd., Frisco, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Grapevine, 1643 Lancaster Dr., Suite 300, Grapevine, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Irving, 3337 Stovall, Irving, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Rockwall, 2455 Ridge Road, Suite 255, Rockwall, Texas
• Our Children's House at Baylor-Waxahachie, 1540 N. U.S. Highway 77, Building C, Suite 10, Waxahachie, Texas

Leadership

Scott Peek, president, Our Children's House at Baylor

Directions, parking information and phone numbers

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