During a recent conversation with my colleagues about how well Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women is doing at caring for women, mothers and babies, we wagered how many little ones would be delivered at the hospital in fiscal year 2018.
My educated guess was 6,250. And wouldn’t you know it? That is exactly how many precious babies our expert clinical staff brought into the world between October 2017 and September 2018. This number has grown consistently every year since we opened the Pavilion for Women in March 2012, proving that our decision to provide women, mothers and babies with a full continuum of high-quality, expert health care was the right move.
Nearly seven years ago, the opening of the Pavilion was one of the most surreal moments in my years at Texas Children’s. That day was an incredible culmination of events that started in 2005, believe it or not, over a casual cup of coffee with David Fine, then-President and CEO of St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital.
As David and I were talking, he suggested that St. Luke’s was ready to shift away from women’s services. With the same assurance I had when I guessed the number of babies delivered at the Pavilion for Women this year, I immediately and literally raised my hand and said, “I want in. We’ll take it.”
I knew that no organization in the U.S. had conjoined a leading children’s hospital with a women’s hospital providing ob/gyn, maternal fetal medicine and other women’s services. This was a really big, novel idea that, honestly, a lot of people hesitated to embrace. But fortunately, Texas Children’s Board, leaders, staff and employees are not like most people. So this seemingly impossible idea quickly became a reality that our Board and leadership were passionately pursuing.
Within a couple years of that fateful cup of coffee with David, we were starting construction – Texas Children’s Hospital was building Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. And our mission became that much bigger.
As we continue on this incredible journey and trajectory, I am confident it will keep getting better and better. In fact, I’d bet on it!