The upcoming opening of Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children near downtown Denver has sparked a braggy rivalry with Children’s Hospital in Aurora, even though leaders at both say they aren’t in competition.
“We’re not here to say Children’s is a bad place and we’re a good place,” said Dr. Reginald Washington, chief medical officer of the new pediatric hospital. “We don’t compete with Children’s; we offer an alternative quality of care.”
Still, officials at both hospitals are quick to point out why they think they’re better.
For starters, Washington said, pediatric specialists at Rocky Mountain won’t take time off from patients to do research, while the full-time staff physicians at Children’s are also faculty members at the University of Colorado medical school. At academic hospitals, “lousy clinicians” can keep their jobs if they bring in enough research dollars, said Washington, a pediatric cardiologist.
For his part, Children’s Hospital chief executive Jim Shmerling says the new hospital can’t compete with the “unduplicated depth of expertise” that comes with an academic teaching hospital. Physicians at Children’s “take the discoveries and bring them back to the bedside,” he said.
“It in no way detracts from the clinical care those children receive,” Shmer ling said, adding that Children’s is ranked among the top 10 pediatric hospitals in the country and that “there is only one licensed hospital for children in the state of Colorado.”
Rocky Mountain is licensed not as an independent children’s hospital but as part of Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center, near Gilpin Street and East 19th Avenue.
Competition — or whatever you want to call it — between the hospitals is cranking up as workers open the last boxes of furniture and lay the final carpet tiles in advance of Rocky Mountain’s Aug. 31 opening. The $128 million expansion includes a new High Street emergency entrance for Presbyterian/St. Luke’s and Rocky Mountain, where the emergency department is divided into pediatric and adult sections. The current emergency entrance for Presbyterian/St. Luke’s will be closed.
Rocky Mountain officials said their setup — a hospital for adults adjoining a pediatric hospital — gives them an advantage over Children’s. For example, if a woman in labor loses too much blood and her baby needs emergency surgery, the hospital can handle both.
“The entire team is here,” said Matt Sogard, Rocky Mountain’s chief operating officer.
Children’s, just across the Aurora medical campus from University Hospital, announced last month it is expanding its services to allow mothers to deliver babies there. In the past, babies in need of emergency surgery after birth were whisked across campus by ambulance from University Hospital or flown in from other medical centers.
Rocky Mountain officials say they expect the mother-baby program at Children’s to handle “niche” cases, such as heart defects or organ problems diagnosed in utero, rather than other high-risk births. They maintain their hospital is better suited to handle unexpected emergencies that arise during labor.
On that point, Shmerling agrees, sort of.
The new maternal-fetal program at Children’s is for moms whose babies need surgical intervention within 72 hours of birth, not for mothers at high risk for complications. But in a few years, University Hospital will move its labor-and-delivery department across campus to Children’s, creating a program similar to Presbyterian/St. Luke’s.
The rivalry between the two hospitals is based on more than just reputation; some worry that the Denver area will become oversaturated with certain pediatric specialties. Denver already might have too many pediatric cardiovascular surgeons, for example.
Presbyterian/St. Luke’s, which has the busiest neonatal intensive-care unit in the state, had no pediatric services until the early 1990s. Washington and seven other pediatric specialists started the hospital’s program after leaving Children’s when Children’s partnered with University Hospital and doctors there had to become faculty.
“Some of us wanted to maintain private practice,” Washington said.
Their dream of opening a children’s hospital stretches back further than the decision by Children’s to move from East Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard to the new medical school in Aurora, Washington said.
The four-story, 53-bed Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children looks more like a hotel or a library than a hospital, with bright blocks of color splashed on the walls and floors — lime greens, oranges and blues. One floor has a “river” theme, with light fixtures shaped like fish and counters at the nurses’ station made with river rocks.
There are also havens — an outdoor playground, an art-therapy center and a Ronald McDonald room with food, massage chairs and books.
“Kids get very paranoid when procedures are being done in their room,” Washington said. “They know when they go to the Ronald McDonald room nobody is going to come in and do something to them.”
Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com
