In a move to increase access to high quality pediatric medical care in the rapidly-expanding West Valley, Phoenix Children’s Hospital announced Wednesday that it is building a new $135-million, freestanding hospital in Glendale. 

The news comes on the heels of two other new Phoenix Children’s projects on the Westside — a freestanding pediatric emergency department and a youth sports clinic. 

In all, the three projects represent $200 million in investment and 650 new jobs for the region, said Bob Meyer, the president and CEO of Phoenix Children’s. 

But most importantly, it will bring pediatric care “closer to home” for West Valley children, said Meyer, who was joined by the mayors of Glendale and Avondale and other community leaders. 

“The West Valley is booming. The population is projected to grow at twice the national rate over the next five years,” he said. “Kids represent a big part of this growth. It is estimated that the number of children will grow 25 percent, from 400,00 children today to 500,000 by 2030. 

“These children deserve to have world class pediatric medical care right in their own backyard.” 

Three projects will be able to handle 133,000 annual visits

Together, the three projects represent one of the largest expansions in the history of the organization, Meyer said, providing the capacity for up to 133,00 visits annually. 

Here’s what’s planned 

-Phoenix Children’s Hospital – Arrowhead Campus, Glendale Expected to open in 2024, the new hospital will offer inpatient care, an emergency department, an outpatient surgery center and a multi-specialty clinic. Construction will place it next to the Abrazo Arrowhead hospital at 18701 N. 67th Ave. in Glendale. 

The 180,000 square-foot hospital will open with 24 inpatient beds with room for up to 48. It will need about 473 employees and will handle up to 76,000 visits a year. Also on the campus, will be a clinic, offering more than 25 specialty services, including cardiology, dermatology, general surgery, nephrology, neurology, orthopedics, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, and psychiatry.

-Southwest Campus for emergency care, Avondale A new in Avondale is scheduled for opening in the spring of 2023. It will house a freestanding emergency department and multi-specialty clinic on the current site of Phoenix Children’s Southwest Valley Specialty and Urgent Care Center at 1665 N. Avondale Blvd. 

The emergency department will have the capacity to serve 40,000 visits annually, filling a void in the West Valley for pediatric-specific critical care, hospital officials said. 

“Kids with serious or life-threatening illnesses or injuries fare much better at a pediatric emergency department than an adult ER,” said Jared Muenzer, physician-in-chief at Phoenix Children’s. “This site will be staffed with board certified pediatric emergency medicine specialists who have the training and expertise to care for the most critical patients.”

Phoenix Children’s will invest $39.9 million to build and equip a new 71,250-square-foot, three-story building and retrofit the existing 35,000-square-foot building for emergency services. The emergency department will offer access to physicians in more than 75 pediatric subspecialties; 40 rooms that include triage, treatment and resuscitation; six “quick turnover” beds; ultrasound, CT scans, fluoroscopy and digital radiography. Nearly 164 employees are expected to work out of the Southwest Campus, with half being new positions.

-Youth Sports Medicine Clinic, Avondale The is expected to open this year in Avondale in “,” near the American Sports Center, Arizona’s largest indoor sports complex with over 500,000 visitors annually. The clinic will operate a physical therapy, rehabilitation and education center providing sports medicine and orthopedic rehabilitation specifically for the youth and high school community in the West Valley.  

The 7,880-square-foot facility is located at 765 N. 114th Avenue is expected to cost about $2.1 million, have the capacity to handle 17,000 visits a year, and employ about 16 people.

About Phoenix Children’s 

Phoenix Children’s is one of the nation’s largest pediatric health systems. Its inpatient, outpatient, emergency, trauma and urgent care services have been recognized as a “Best Children’s Hospital” by U.S. News & World Report. The Leapfrog Group, a coalition of employers who use their collective purchasing power to structure their insurance contracts to reward the highest performing hospitals, also has named Phoenix Children’s as one of only 13 to be designated a “.” . 

The healthcare system comprises Phoenix Children’s Hospital–Main Campus; Phoenix Children’s Hospital–East Valley at Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center; four pediatric specialty and urgent care centers; 11 community pediatric practices; 20 outpatient clinics; two ambulatory surgery centers; and six community-service-related outpatient clinics across Arizona. 

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Phoenix Children’s Hospital will be opening its expanded and upgraded Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit in July, doubling the hospital’s capacity for heart patients and adding technological advances to make cardiovascular treatment easier and more efficient.

Dubbed the CVICU, the brightly-colored new wing of (PCH) is empty at the moment, but it will soon be packed with young heart patients.

“The cardiac intensive care unit here at Phoenix Children’s Hospital has become quite busy, and we operate every day at nearly capacity,” said Dr. Joshua D. Koch, pediatric specialist and division chief of the. “There’s been a real need for expansion for some time now.”

Koch said the new unit — which features 48 total beds, doubling the former 24-bed unit — was designed using input from clinicians as well as patients’ families, who participated in the Phoenix Children’s Heart Family Advisory Board. PCH used the advisory board’s recommendations to tailor its new CVICU rooms to patients’ various needs.

The improvements should make work easier for providers: additional monitors give physicians a better view of patient vitals; new surgical lighting allows each room to be quickly converted into an operating room; and patient lifts allow hospital staff to move larger patients in a way that is safer for both patient and provider.

Beyond increasing surgical capabilities in patient rooms, the CVICU will serve as an integrated, centralized hub for staff, according to a press release from PCH. The expansion also includes private areas for patient families and privacy curtains in every hospital room, so families and patients can interact without interruption.

“We’re very excited about opening this new, state-of-the-art wing to the cardiac ICU,” Koch said. “We’re going to expand not only our ability to take more patients, but also we’ve improved the technology and some of the efficiencies of what we do, as well as taken into account families’ and patients’ opinions about how we could better build the unit.”

PCH provides what is called family-centered care, making sure parents are actively involved with their child’s diagnosis, treatment and recovery process.

Doctors have a responsibility to listen to patients’ families, because parents “know their children very, very well,” Koch said. When at PCH discuss a patient’s plan of care, the parents, siblings and patient — if they are able to participate — play a “really valuable” role in deciding the best course of action, he said.

“We take into account [the family’s] thoughts on their care,” he said. “We really rely on them sometimes, when a child has a particularly complex medical history that’s happened over a long period of time. Families can oftentimes be our best source of information for remembering what worked well for a patient and what didn’t work well.”

Dr. Wayne J. Franklin, cardiologist and co-director of the Heart Center at PCH, said the new CVICU is important because it will provide much-needed resources and care options for the growing number of cardiac patients at the hospital.

“ is expanding,” Franklin said. “We’re seeing more patients, we’re seeing sicker patients, and we’re seeing a lot more cardiac patients, and so we need more space to treat them. We’re seeing them at earlier stages in life; we’re seeing them at later stages in life.”

There has been a “big push” to have standalone children’s hospitals nationwide that can take care of the most vulnerable child patients, and the new CVICU is a response to that, Franklin said.

Koch said PCH’s goal is to expand its patient population: “As children with congenital heart disease grow up into adults with congenital heart disease, we try to plan and think forward about that.”

Koch and Franklin are relatively new to Phoenix — Franklin started at PCH in September, and Koch has been there about a year — but both said they were impressed by the amount of support PCH receives from the community and local philanthropy.

“Phoenix is really getting behind this hospital in a way that shows that they care about the children of Phoenix and Maricopa County, and, really, of Arizona and the Southwest,” Koch said. “We are the premier center to get congenital heart surgery performed in the Southwest.”

Franklin said the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Foundation, the hospital’s, has partnered with charities and corporations in the Valley, including groups like the and the Scottsdale Active 20-30 Club, to form a community-based coalition to raise money for the new CVICU.

“Phoenix Children’s Hospital has really made an effort to find several pillars and several specialties to really support and go after,” Franklin said. “Fortunately for us, cardiology and Heart Center is one.”

Earlier this year, the heart surgery program at Phoenix Children’s Hospital of three stars from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons for the sixth year in a row.

There are other centers of excellence at PCH, too, including and cancer research, Franklin said.

“There’s a lot of really good work going on here in Phoenix Children’s right now,” he said.

Franklin said he comes to work every day “energized and invigorated” to work with his colleagues and help patients.

“It’s just been an honor and a pleasure to work here, and I hope that we can continue to raise the bar for cardiac and medical care in Phoenix,” he said.

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