Dayton Children’s has always been a staple in the community known for great care and innovative technology but now they have truly gone #aboveandbeyond4kids. The new tower officially opened June 5th, 2017 and we got a sneak peak of the steps they took to fly high with this new building.
The new 260,000-square-foot, eight-story patient tower rises above the rest of the hospital. “Each space inside the new patient care tower was created to embody Dayton Children’s unique patient care mission and to facilitate the delivery of world class pediatric care,” says Deborah Feldman, President and CEO. The design theme of the tower is “things that fly” to honor Dayton’s rich aviation heritage and innovation in flight.
Right when you first walk in the doors, you are greeted by the gorgeous Dragonflyer that is a gift to the children of Dayton. It is to thank them for the inspiration to soar higher, think bigger, dream fearlessly, and hope that every heartbeat will bring an innovation to make life better.
Key design elements of the new patient tower include:
- Continuity of care – The new Comprehensive Cancer and Blood Disorders Center is a combined inpatient and outpatient unit and includes a pharmacy, infusion rooms for chemotherapy and an enhanced patient experience with dedicated child life specialists, indoor/outdoor play spaces, multiple space for family/patient interaction and a teen room.
- Better outcomes – The Newborn Intensive Care Unit further enhances the commitment to family-centered and developmentally-sensitive care through single-family room design which has been proven to increase skin-to-skin contact, enhance success rates of breastfeeding, further reduce infection and noise, and increase privacy – ultimately creating better outcomes for the region’s most fragile babies. The new NICU also has a dedicated milk lab.
- Critical care technology – The critical care complex is a custom designed space to maximize efficiency and patient safety, while also providing more space for technology and family comfort for our most critically-ill and injured children in the pediatric intensive care unit and technology-dependent patients in our transitional care unit.
- Optimal healing environment: Patients requiring an overnight stay will benefit from the enhanced general pediatrics inpatient unit which will feature larger single-family rooms, improved technology and upgraded family amenities.
They put a lot of detail into the “things that fly” theme with the new CulinAIRy Kitchen for full service, Up Café for grab and go, Altitude gift shop, Wings of Birds, picture frames that include both nature and man made things that fly, a Sky Lab for families to enjoy outdoors without going too far, and beautiful mosaic that came together once every employee, family and patient colored theirs.
“Anything is possible,” says Feldman. “That is what we believe and that is what we want every family who comes through the doors of Dayton Children’s to believe. So as we reach one ending, a new beginning takes shape. We will keep our hopes and aspirations for our children and their families, always above the clouds, always reaching for the stars to ensure that the kids of the Dayton region have world class pediatric health care close to home. We could not be more excited to share this wonderful new patient tower. It is our gift to the children and families of Dayton demonstrating them that this is a community that puts kids first.”
Community celebration
Dayton Children’s invites the community to an open house in the patient tower on Sunday, June 11, 2017 from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Everyone is welcome to see the amazing spaces and hear the inspiring stories here. They will also see how the hospital is partnering with community agencies to improve life for children even if they never set foot inside the hospital walls.
