With 42-inch flat-screen TVs in the rooms, pullout couches for overnight guests and a no-parents-allowed rec room with a juke box, pinball machine and video games, youngsters could almost forget this is a hospital.
Even the medical equipment at the University of Chicago's new Comer Children's Hospital is hidden, stored in wall vaults with sliding doors camouflaged by colorful artwork.
A 2003 survey by the National Association of Children's Hospitals found that at least 41 of the nation's 250 children's hospitals had construction projects under way or recently completed. Among them: a newly opened $172 million children's hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, a $250 million children's hospital in Denver slated to open in 2007, a $500 million expansion at Children's Hospital Los Angeles to open in 2008, and a $1.1 billion expansion at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to open in 2010.
The boom stems from changes in U.S. health care that have given children's hospitals a larger share of a shrinking market, said Lawrence McAndrews, president of the National Association of Children's Hospitals. With managed care's emphasis on hospitalizing only the sickest patients, most children needing hospital care are now sent to children's hospitals.
The original design for Comer's patient rooms had bathrooms visible from the corridor. Patients complained, so the bathrooms were tucked out of view, said Dr. Steve Goldstein, who was recruited from Yale last year to run the new $135 million hospital on Chicago's South Side.
Patients also helped pick the hospital's interior color scheme — cornflower blue and gold rather than hospital green.
The University of Chicago is now No. 26 on U.S. News & World Report's 2004 list of top hospitals for pediatrics. Crosstown rival Children's Memorial Hospital is ranked No. 9.
Goldstein built a national reputation during a decade at Yale studying the molecular mechanisms underlying disease, including abnormalities in electrical activity of nerves and muscles that can lead to ailments such as sudden infant death syndrome and life-threatening heart arrhythmias.
His immediate mission at Comer is introducing staff and patients to the new 155-bed building, an angular structure of shimmering glass and steel that is more than twice the size of the old gray facility across the street. Lands' End founder Gary Comer and his wife, Frances, donated $21 million to build the hospital, one of the largest naming gifts to any U.S. children's hospital.
