Photograph courtesy of Mercy Children's Hospital
After a five-year construction process, Mercy Children’s Hospital in Creve Coeur opened in late February. The new patient tower consolidates nearly all of the pediatric rooms and services that were previously scattered throughout St. John’s Medical Center. Now families arrive in Mercy’s main lobby, sign in at its registration area, and walk across the hall for testing and treatment. It’s one-stop shopping for pediatric medicine, says department of pediatrics chairman Dr. Joseph Kahn.
“When patients come in, they come to a child-friendly, private environment. The family stays in that room and there’s not a lot of moving around between curtain area 'A' or curtain area 'B',” he says.
Animal murals, shades of green and tan, plus a touch of periwinkle blanket the walls in an effort to both sooth young patients and alert St. John’s visitors that they stumbled into a kid–friendly environment.
Accommodation and privacy were also big on Mercy’s list. There are play areas for young children and teens, plus a parent lounge furnished with a washer and dryer, shower, computer lab, television, and small library.
All patients have their own room, including newborns. “In the past, neonatal intensive care units were sort of like big casinos,” Kahn says. “You had to be in one to appreciate it, but they were open ward-type units with one baby after the next…[There was] a lot of equipment, a lot of noise, a lot of meters going off.” Now, it’s calm. Throughout the entire hospital, monitors are centrally located and alert nurses via personal phones.
Mercy is St. Louis’ third children’s hospital, but Kahn says there’s enough demand to warrant them and that all serve a different demographic. Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center mostly treats patients from the city and southwest Illinois while St. Louis Children’s Hospital is more of a regional institution. Mercy receives most of its patients from West County and St. Charles, Warren and Lincoln counties. It is also St. Louis’ only children’s hospital situated within an adult center.
Mercy treats 100,000 patients yearly and can take 169 children at full capacity. It was certified as a children’s hospital in 2004.
