Mark Cornelison
Interactive wall at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
The bright pedway leading from the parking garage to the new Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center probably was not designed as a raceway for children trying out their new prosthetic limbs, and yet today its carpeted floor is getting quite the workout.
As one young boy darts toward the garage and back again, his mother calls to him, “How does it feel?”
“It doesn’t hurt at all!” he shouts, radiating a light comparable to the sunshine that fills the glass-walled corridor.
It’s a small, joyful moment in a setting meant to remind children of what they can do, rather than what they can’t.
Shriners’ ambulatory care center treats children from birth to the age of 18, and sometimes as old as 21, for pediatric orthopedic conditions such scoliosis, club foot, amputations, limb deficiencies and other disorders that affect the skeletal system and movement. Many of these conditions can require lifelong monitoring, adjustments and treatment.
The new $47 million Shriners Medical Center opened in April on the University of Kentucky’s campus after relocating from Richmond Road. It sits across Limestone Avenue from UK HealthCare’s Kentucky Children’s Hospital, which is also connected to Shriners by a pedway.
While the two are separate entities, they can now work even more closely together in offering care to young patients. Kentucky Children’s Hospital handles pediatric orthopedic inpatients, and Shriners Medical Center cares for pediatric orthopedic outpatients. The two share a staff of board-certified pediatric orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists, as they have for the past 30-plus years, with Kentucky Children’s Hospital also providing Shriners Medical Center access to orthopedic specialists and subspecialists.
Administrator Tony Lewgood, who has led Shriners Medical Center for more than two decades, said the collaboration has “more than exceeded” his expectations.
The new location benefits both groups in many ways, starting with the close proximity that allows immediate access to each other, he said, citing the case of a child who arrived at the UK emergency department with a fractured elbow that morning and needed surgery promptly.
“After her emergency department care was complete, she was seen right away here [at Shriners], where she will have her surgery the same morning and be able to go home,” he said. “Being so close facilitated that. … We’ve found [UKHC] to be very cooperative — a good partner in children’s health care. It’s two organizations striving for the same goal, which is the best care for our patients.”
The partnership also works well when a Shriners Medical Center patient needs surgery or treatment that requires hospitalization, said Dr. Henry Iwinski, chief of staff at Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center. “This model has enabled seamless inpatient treatment, and our patients will continue to be treated by the familiar pediatric orthopedic surgeons who have monitored their condition for years.”
Other aspects of the relationship are also intertwined. While Shriners Hospitals for Children owns the new five-story building, it leases the land from UK, which in turn leases floors four and five to house its ophthalmology department. Of the 117,000 total square feet, Shriners Medical Center occupies 60,000.
Where art meets technology
1 of 7
Mark Cornelison
EOS / X-ray center at Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
2 of 7
Mark Cornelison
EOS / X-ray center at Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
3 of 7
Mark Cornelison
Orthotist Matthew Mattox, works on the specs of a cast at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
4 of 7
Mark Cornelison
PACU unit at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
5 of 7
Mark Cornelison
Pre post area at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
6 of 7
Mark Cornelison
Detail of prosthetic leg at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
7 of 7
Mark Cornelison
Eric Miller, Manager Pediatric Orthotic and Prosthetic services at Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
That space has been filled with a combination of state-of-the-art medical technology and eye-catching design. Natural light streams through curved glass and floor-to-ceiling windows, including several that shift color with the changing angles of the sun. Colorful abstract murals and nature photography brighten walls at every turn. Spaces abound where kids can play rather than sit in a sterile waiting room. Several magnet-filled walls allow them to move shapes around and create designs or post their artwork. There is always something interesting to look at or explore.
Patients — who mostly come from Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia — also have the convenience of everything being housed in one building. Treatment often starts in a high-tech motion analysis lab, where Hollywood-style stick-figure animation is used to assess patients performing different tasks such as walking, reaching, breathing, and so forth, and allows doctors to develop an individualized care plan.
If patients require outpatient surgery, it is done on site, as are prosthetic, orthotic and brace fittings. Physical therapy and occupational therapy are also administered in-house, along with any necessary bloodwork, injections or other outpatient treatments.
State-of-the-art medical technology includes the EOS Imaging System, which is an ultra-low-dose radiation system that performs 2-D and 3-D imaging. Orthopedic patients are frequently X-rayed, said Morgan Hall, public relations specialist with Shriners Medical Center, and using the $1 million EOS system — the first of its kind in Kentucky — can cut down children’s radiation exposure over time by 50 to 85 percent.
Funds for the new Shriners Medical Center were raised through a very successful community campaign that set a goal of $7 million for local contributions over three years, and then raised nearly $8 million in one year. The remainder came from Shriners’ corporate offices, and the pending sale of its former property on Richmond Road to an as-of-yet-unnamed buyer will also help allay the cost.
Mark Cornelison
Shriners Hospital on Monday July 10, 2017 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Mark Cornelison
Coming full circle
UK’s campus is Shriner’s fourth location, bringing it back downtown where it began. The Lexington Shriners Hospitals for Children was one of 22 that Shriners started in the 1920s to provide free orthopedic treatment to children with polio whose families could not otherwise afford it. The 20-bed Lexington hospital opened in 1926 and was connected to Good Samaritan Hospital on Maxwell Street.
In the 1950s, Shriners Hospitals for Children bought 28 acres on Richmond Road for $63,776, and built a new hospital. But as polio cases began to decline with the advent of Jonas Salk’s vaccine, the Shriners began looking at other ways they could help children. They added burn care, spinal cord rehabilitation, and cleft lip and palate repair at some of their hospitals.
The Richmond Road location retained its orthopedics specialty and was rebuilt in the early 1980s during a network-wide reconstruction campaign by Shriners Hospitals for Children. The sprawling 117,000-square-foot, 50-bed facility, set atop a hill and easily visible from the road, became a Lexington icon and was widely known and supported for its charitable services.
Donations flattened out during the Great Recession, however, and in 2010 Shriners began billing patients’ insurance companies and charging co-payments, but only to those families that could afford to pay. To this day, no one is turned away for an inability to pay.
With the downturn also came a greater push for efficiency. Burgeoning medical technology was already shifting most of the procedures done at the Lexington Shriner’s location from inpatient to outpatient, with only the most severe cases requiring inpatient admissions.
This situation created the right scenario for UKHC to approach Shriners Hospitals for Children about an on-campus move and collaboration.
“Current literature suggests that this model is the future for standards of care,” said Iwinski. “If Shriners had renovated the previous hospital on Richmond Road to add a pediatric intensive care unit, it would have been very costly. It also would have duplicated the services already offered at Kentucky Children’s Hospital.
“Since opening the new facility, Lexington Shriners Medical Center has seen an increase in volume [from 11,000 established patients annually to an expected 14,000] and expansion in the scope of patients we care for,” said Iwinski. “For instance, we are now handling a majority of the fracture cases and being attentive to the timeliness that comes with those types of cases.”
The move to a brand-new facility allowed the opportunity for the 120-member staff to have input on its features.
“The architecture and design were done in a way that promotes healing,” said Hall. “We don’t want children to feel as though they are walking into a medical center. We also want them to leave feeling like they accomplished something.”
So maybe it’s not just coincidence that the pedway gives patients a chance to spread their wings on the way out.