Children's Hospital Corporation

CLINICAL CARE: The services we offer - from well child visits and treatment for typical child health issues (broken bones, tonsillitis, etc.) to chronic care (asthma, diabetes, obesity, etc.) and specialty services (oncology, cardiology, neurology) - benefit from our clinicians' high level of specialization, our collaboration with research scientists (many of whom are also physicians) affiliated with the hospital, and our significant investments in equipment, facilities and clinical and support staff. We also offer the only pediatrics Department of Addiction Medicine in the U.S., as well as the only Orthopedic Sports Medicine program located at a children's hospital. We also offer the largest programs in Pediatric Anesthesiology, Pediatric Cardiology, and Pediatric Critical Care, in the nation. Boston Children's is the safety net institution for very sick children throughout the region, supporting the entire health care system for the most complex pediatric cases. We receive referrals from community hospitals as well as from other academic medical centers throughout New England. Approximately 25% of our inpatients are transferred from hospitals & medical centers across Massachusetts for care that no one else can provide. In FY24, Boston Children's saw approximately 775,000 outpatient visits, 68,000 emergency department visits, 26,000 inpatient or observation stays, and 32,000 inpatient or day surgeries. Our inpatient case mix index was 2.11 (MA only) and the average length of stay was 6.4 days. Of these patients, approximately 35% (patients on Medicaid/Medicare) are considered low income.Our Medicaid ACO provides primary care to 20% of the children covered by Medicaid in the state. The ability to support the health-related social needs of patients and families via the ACO complements the work that we are doing in communities to address the more systemic social determinants of health. We can address "downstream" immediate needs of children and families, but also to work with communities and partners to affect the "upstream" factors that drive poorer health outcomes for so many. This includes a focus on policy that can impact health.We remain committed to advancing health equity through Boston Children's Sandra L. Fenwick Institute. Through the Institute's works, we seek to transform pediatrics by addressing persistent disparities in the delivery of care to our nation's children. In 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Public Health Council unanimously approved our Determination of Need (DoN) application for the modernization of the Franciscan Children's campus and programs. This latest approval is affirmation by the state of the growing demand of meeting the needs of children for both behavioral health and rehabilitative care, and to further support the critical dental surgical program located on the Franciscan campus. The project will allow us to build out the full continuum of behavioral health services to meet the needs of our patients, as well as update Kennedy Day School, which provides integrated special education, therapeutic and health services to more than 60 students with complex needs from more than 30 communities across Massachusetts.Increasingly, we have been able to care for and improve life and health outcomes for medically complex children, many with conditions such as congenital heart conditions, childhood cancers & complex neurological and neurosurgical conditions. Our capabilities are accelerating rapidly as we develop new clinical & surgical approaches including gene therapies, stem cell transplant procedures, fetal surgical interventions, and the like.Boston Children's is at the absolute forefront nationally in these & many other areas. As a result, we have seen significant growth in the number of complex patients served patients who stay longer, require more resources (such as intensive care unit-level care), use a broader range of interdisciplinary specialists, and frequently require substantial support for their whole family. Some of them travel great distances, but equally many are from here in Massachusetts.Boston Children's MA/Regional network consists of our satellite/physician office locations, formal primary care relationships with groups such as the PPOC and Atrius, community health center relationships and a broad array of relationships with other hospitals in MA and NE including community hospitals, academic medical centers and specialty hospitals. We maintain relationships of varying structures, shapes and sizes with nearly all of the major academic medical centers and specialty hospitals in MA and New England, from a single service agreement such as providing remote EEG interpretations to Elliot Hospital to staffing community hospitals 24/7 365 per year to our multi-faceted Brigham relationship and joint cancer program with Dana Farber. Our satellite/physician office locations and our community hospital relationships in eastern MA have been central to our commitment to increasing access to high quality pediatric services. Over the past 20+ years we have gradually grown our network of satellites/physician office locations and community hospital relationships providing a mix of neonatal, ED and inpatient services. Today, more than 30% of our outpatient specialty visits and surgical cases take place in a Boson Children's satellite or physician office location. Our affiliated community hospitals account for nearly half of our MA community hospital transfers and 30% (~ 1,000) of all intra-hospital transfers. These community hospital relationships also generate important downstream referrals to our specialists including important neonatal referrals from the obstetrical programs at these community hospitals. As fewer community hospitals provide inpatient pediatric care, these hospitals are increasingly serving as regional pediatric hubs to help stem the tide of patients who have to be referred to Boston for community level care.

RESEARCH: Our Research Mission is to be the leading source of research and discovery. We are the leader in discovery and innovation that is dramatically advancing not only pediatric care but adult care as well. We have the world's largest pediatric research program for many reasons. The most important reason is our focus on our patients. We are constantly evolving care and caring for increasingly complex patients. Every child who walks through our doors teaches us something. More than 3,000 basic, clinical, and translational research employees work in our dedicated facilities, which total some 1 million square feet of space.Our more than 1,100 investigators include 13 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 30 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 25 Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 13 Fellows of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences, 12 current members and 13 alumni of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Twenty-seven faculty are members of the American Association of Physicians and 47 are members of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Over the years, four Boston Children's investigators have won the Nobel Prize and six have won the nearly equally prestigious Lasker Award.Our investigators are Harvard Medical School faculty basic scientists, clinical researchers and epidemiologists - who are accelerating the pace of medical discovery from brainstorm to bench to bedside. Our researchers were the first to develop 10 new disease-based stem cell lines by reprogramming adult stem cells that can be used to study treatments for diseases ranging from Parkinson's to Diabetes.