Arkansas Children’s Hospital and Medical Center of South Arkansas announced a joining commitment Thursday at the Robert Tommey Conference Center, followed by a sign unveiling at the women’s center.
MCSA is the newest member of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital’s (ACH) Nursery Alliance, which will elevate neonatal care for the the region’s newborns. Through the alliance, ACH will support MCSA to help ensure the care families count on close to home will continue in the nursery, a news release stated.
MCSA is the fifth member of the ACH’s nursery alliance. The alliance will allow neonatal patients to stay closer to home, without requiring them to be transported to Little Rock, unless a baby’s condition requires it.
“Through the nursery alliance and our fifth member here, we’re trying to change that story for the tiniest children across Arkansas,” said Marcy Doderer, President and CEO of ACH. “Because we don’t think it’s just enough to stick with our mission, which is about a better today, it really is about a healthier tomorrow.”
Doderer said Arkansas is ranked in the bottom 10 out of 50 states for child health and well being.
“The effort of the nursery alliance is to try to change that trajectory of children and child health for our state,” she said. “The alliance collaborates and reviews quality data, it grows and enhances care, institutes best practices in order to improve the quality of Arkansas nurseries and the health and safety of newborns in our state.”
MCSA’s CEO Scott Street said the alliance will benefit South Arkansas in two phases, with the first being education.
“We’ve already started some education with our physicians and now we are rotating certain specialist from Arkansas Children’s down to educate and train our staff to become more proficient and to do certain things with infants,” Street said. “Because it is our desire to keep babies here longer and keep mom and baby together and the baby and mom not have to travel away from family.”
Street said the second phase will be focused on the neonatal intensive care unit. “We used to have one years ago and it closed a number of years ago,” he said. “It is our desire with this alliance with Arkansas Children’s to have it back open again soon.”
Street said the alliance was a mutual fit for both MCSA and ACH, adding that it is part of MCSA’s destination health care initiative.
“We reached out and asked if this would be a good place with what we’re trying to do with our growth,” Street said. “It was just a natural marriage and we really appreciate them being open to allowing us to be apart of their alliance.”
Allison Stone, MCSA’s women’s center director said the goal for this alliance is to keep more moms and babies close to home and together.
The press release states that the collaboration elevates neonatal care for the region’s newborns and addresses one of the state’s most vexing health problems: infant mortality. For every 1,000 babies born in the state, eight die before their first birthdays.
Families will also have access to post discharge follow-up by monitoring and measuring late morbidities through an expanded High Risk Newborn network.
The neonatal period is defined as the first four weeks after birth.
Kaitlyn Rigdon can be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected].