During Friday’s dedication ceremony for the University of Iowa’s new children’s hospital, an 11-year-old patient summarized the goal of the designers, planners and builders of the new, 14-story facility:
“I don’t want to stay here anytime soon, but when I do, I know it’s a great place,” said Maren Denison, who has had several extended stays at UI Hospitals and Clinics since being born there, two months prematurely.
Maren and her 1-minute-younger twin brother, Berne, were the stars of an hour-long ceremony Friday that officially opened the Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
“We have a disease called cystic fibrosis,” Maren told a standing-room-only crowd in the new facility's two-story lobby. “It’s a chronic disease that makes our mucous extra sticky. We work hard to keep the disease from damaging our lungs. Every day we each spend 75 minutes doing physical therapy to help clear our lungs.”
Immediately after their birth, Maren and Berne had to stay for more than eight weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the main UIHC building. At that time — and during subsequent extended hospital visits — they said their parents usually had to sleep in the Ronald McDonald House because there wasn’t adequate space for other family members in patients' rooms.
The new $360 million hospital facility, which is scheduled to open to patients next month, will include space for parents and siblings in patients’ rooms. And in addition to state-of-the-art medical technology, it also will include a number of kid-friendly options,including a library, interactive theater, cafeteria, garden and 12th-floor viewing of Kinnick Stadium.
"There is no place quite like the Stead Family Children’s Hospital,” said Jean Robillard, UI’s outgoing vice president for medical affairs. “... I’m sure you will have a chance to look around at what Iowa children and their families will experience when they come here: light, color, hidden details and the ability to engage with the environment (that makes) this hospital warm and inviting, unlike all others.”
Over the past week, more than than 25,000 members of the community have toured the new facility.
Previous coverage:
- Regents OK another $70M for UI Children's Hospital
- UI Children's Hospital on target for 2016
- Community offered sneak peek of children's hospital rooms
- Iowa Board of Regents tour UI Children's Hospital
- Regents OK another $70M for UI Children's Hospital
- UI Children's Hospital on target for 2016
Over four yearsof construction, however, the estimated costs of the new facility have increased more than 23 percent from an initial 2012 budget of $292 million.
“There were a lot of issues that popped up as we went through this,” said UI President Bruce Harreld, who started his job last year,shortly after the Iowa Board of Regents increased the hospital's budget by more than $68 million. “(During) initial approval, we thought we understood the financial envelope, but we didn’t, and we had a few other things to squeeze in. We needed more approval —more support throughout the way.”
The nine-member board, which oversees the university and its hospitals, has been supportive of the endeavor.
Regent Larry McKibben, who chairs the regents' committee on the UIHC, said Friday that the new facility will help both the university and the board better fulfill their core mission of serving the needs of the state.
McKibben also praised Robillard and other UIHC leaders for epitomizing the definition of the word “vision”: “The act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be as well as a vivid imagination, conception and anticipation.”
There have been concerns raised about the staffing of the new hospital. Earlier this fall, members of Service Employees International UnionLocal 199 ralliedto protest staffing shortages among nurses at UIHC. Union members said they worried those nursing shortages would only worsen after the opening of the new children's hospital.
But Friday's ceremony focused on the hospital's continued role as the only comprehensive children's hospital in the state.
Jerre Stead — a UI alum and long-time donor whose family the new hospital is named after—described the new children’s hospital as evidence of Robillard’s ability to transform a dream into a vision that could become a reality.
“This needs to be the focal point for the University of Iowa worldwide,” Stead said. “This brings together the great people that provide great things every day at the University of Iowa, with wonderful technology in a very enabling building. That’s as good as it gets.”
Robillard announced in September that, after nearly 10 years, he was stepping down as UI vice president of medical affairs. He will remain in the position until a national search is completed and a successor can come to campus.
Reach Jeff Charis-Carlson at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffCharis.
