Close Kids Care

Good morning!

Before I get to today’s topic, I want to remind you that Dr. Luke Lampton will be the featured speaker for the next Vice Chancellor Lecture Series at noon on Tuesday, April 23 in School of Medicine auditorium 124. He will be sharing insights from his photo and story book about the history of health care in Mississippi. I hope to see you there.

Now, on to today’s topic, why we have had a focus on growing a statewide Children’s of Mississippi network.

Mississippi’s children deserve the best care right here in the state we call home. Speaking not only as an emergency medicine physician but also as a mother and grandmother, I know that having expert care available close by is vital to the health of children who are ill or injured. Any parent can tell you that if one of their babies needed medical care, they’d want it to be minutes away, not hours, and within a short drive, not several states away.

That’s what drives the vision of Children’s of Mississippi, the umbrella name used to refer to all UMMC pediatric care including the state’s only children’s hospital and clinics throughout the state. Dr. Guy Giesecke, Children’s of Mississippi CEO, shared information on this topic with members of the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning earlier this week.

Children’s of Mississippi, he told IHL board members, is more than a hospital in Jackson. Throughout the state, in other hospitals and our own ambulatory clinics, Children’s of Mississippi, or Children’s for short, is improving care for children.

Neonatal intensive care from Children’s reaches from the Kathy and Joe Sanderson Tower here on the main campus all the way to Memorial Hospital Gulfport and North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. Pediatric intensive care is provided by Children’s physicians at North Mississippi Medical Center, too.

Our outpatient specialty clinics serve communities from Tupelo to Biloxi, Hattiesburg to Meridian. This brings care close to home for our patients and their families. Some of the experts in these clinics around the state live in the communities they serve, while others are based here in the Jackson area but see patients in clinics located in other parts of the state.

Thanks to these clinics, parents and children no longer face a day of driving and missing work and school for follow-up care and treatment of chronic conditions. Having our clinics close to home makes health care accessible for more Mississippians.

Children’s system of care also includes primary care clinics on the Gulf Coast, in Greenwood and at the Batson Kids Clinic here in Jackson, near Veterans’ Memorial Stadium.

Helping all the children in the state reach their full potential is essential to providing the highest quality care at Children’s of Mississippi. Thankfully, children don’t need as much hospital care as adults. A larger population base, one the size of the whole state of Mississippi, is needed to support a hospital dedicated to the highest level of children’s health care.

Our relationship with the children and families of the state is symbiotic. As Children’s works from the hills of North Mississippi to the Coast to help the children reach their full potential, their families, by choosing Children’s, are helping us provide the world-class care their kids and teens may need at a moment’s notice.

Children are not just little adults. A statewide network that includes UMMC hospitals, specialty and primary care clinics and partner hospitals provides high-quality, advanced care accessible to most Mississippians. Making sure Mississippi’s children have the best health care here at home is just one of the ways we are working together to build A Healthier Mississippi.