Intermountain Healthcare is building a new health system for children. It has received $100 million in gifts from community leaders so far, accelerating its efforts to expand the clinical expertise of Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital to other facilities. The new model health system for children will feature a blend of program, research, and capital expansion, and bring together specialized pediatric caregivers from multiple Intermountain facilities and Primary Children’s pediatric partners at University of Utah Health, ultimately serving children in a 400,000 square mile area encompassing Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Alaska.
The model contains three areas of focus: Strengthening Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City; addressing children’s emerging health needs; and extending care excellence across the Intermountain West.
To strengthen Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, the plan is to focus on adding fetal surgery to repair birth defects in utero, conducting genetic research to provide customized treatments for each child, expanding and modernizing the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and expanding the cancer treatment center to provide treatment in an ideal healing environment.
To address children’s emerging health needs, Intermountain will focus on enhancing services for young people suffering from depression, traumatic experiences, and other mental health conditions; attending to environmental factors that negatively affect children’s lifelong health (racism, poverty, and housing and food instability) while promoting stable, nurturing relationships; ensuring that children with severe chronic health conditions have an opportunity to thrive as they become adults.
To extend care excellence across the Intermountain West service area, the model will focus on building a fully integrated Pediatric Care Network that enhances outreach clinics and telehealth, establishes an emergency and trauma network, and standardizes best practices and protocols across the Intermountain Healthcare system. A second Primary Children’s Hospital campus will be opened in Lehi, Utah, about 45 minutes away from the original campus.
These ambitious goals will require an estimated $500 million investment, shared equally by Intermountain Healthcare and the generous philanthropic support from the communities that Intermountain serves. The investment represents the largest commitment to the care and health of children throughout the Intermountain West since Primary Children’s was envisioned in the early 1900s.
Primary Children’s Hospital is part of Intermountain Healthcare, a not-for-profit system of 24 hospitals, 215 clinics, a medical group with 2,500 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health insurance company called SelectHealth, and other health services in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Primary Children’s Hospital has served more than 1 million children living in a 400,000 square-mile service area including Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Alaska.
This was reported by Intermountain Healthcare on October 5, 2020.
Contact information: Jennifer Toomer-Cook, Media Relations Manager, Intermountain Healthcare Corporate and Executive Offices, 36 S State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111; 801-631-3484; Email: Jennifer.Toomer-Cook@imail.org; Website: https://intermountainhealthcare.org/.
