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closeMary Bridge to open services at Good Samaritan
New partnership will bring more pediatric resources to East Pierce County hospital
Chris Albert
By September, a Mary Bride Pediatric Care Unit at Good Samaritan Hospital will be up and running.
The partnership is aimed at providing more comprehensive care for pediatric hospital visits.
“We really want to make sure that families have access to the services they need,” said Ronn Goodnough, RN, manager of Inpatient Pediatrics at Good Samaritan.
Since its inception in 1996, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma has become nationally recognized for the pediatric care it provides, said Dr. Christopher Kodama, Medical Director of Mary Bride Children’s Hospital and Health Center.
“It brings that level of care eastward,” Goodnough said.
A benefit of the partnership is giving families a closer location to receive pediatric hospital care, Kodama said.
“Just being close to home I think really helps,” he said.
Better health really does rely on the communication between hospital care and primary providers, Kodama said.
“It’s really important to us that the community provider connects with them (Mary Bridge Unit),” Goodnough said.
The Mary Bridge Unit helps facilitate those communications through hospitalists who specialize in hospital care. The role of hospitalist is like a traffic police officer at a busy intersection, Kodama said. They become a single point of contact for families to know all the information coming from specialists, community providers and other healthcare providers, he said.
“Our roles as hospitalists is to be proactive at that,” Kodama said.
The Good Samaritan unit will work in line with the main Mary Bridge campus in how it facilitates care.
“It’s really a team effort in bringing this online,” Kodama said.
Not only will the partnership provide a closer location and availability to more resources, but it will also streamline child medical records so healthcare providers are privy to the same information when providing care.
“It’s really about being experienced about the concept of team,” Kodama said.
The facility itself will take on the life of a comfortable environment for children, Goodnough said. They plan to incorporate Northwest wildlife images throughout the unit with an educational piece that explains each image.
It will mirror the friendly aesthetics found at the Children’s Therapy Unit at Good Samaritan, but provide hospital care rather than the specialized therapy CTU provides.
The opportunity to work together is exciting, Goodnough said.
Nursing staff are being trained to specifically treat children, he said.
“It really is making sure we are communicating at the level of the child,” he said. “That is very important.”
Comfort not only for child patients but also their families is important in helping ease a hospital stay, Goodnough said. The unit will have a family center, where parents can get a away for a bit and take a nap. There also will be chair beds in overnight rooms so parents can stay with their children.
“We’re just trying to create the ideal patient experience in a situation that isn’t ideal,” he said.